#more crazy theories with accirax

[accirax]

“Your mother is dead. You always omit that truth.”

As venus-is-thinking was rewatching DRDT’s Chapter 1 Free Time Events last night, she sent me screenshots of this one interaction between Charles and Whit, noting it as odd:

(She was right, btw. Whit, no matter how hard you try, you are not a normal man.)

Now, with the context of Chapter 2, we can probably assume that what Charles said here triggered Whit’s memories about his dead mom. There are a couple of options here, but the first one that jumped to my mind was that Whit was about to correct Charles, informing him that he actually learned how to cook himself. Obviously, he would then realize that saying this would bring up his mothers death, which he prefers to not mention, so he switches topics. While this option makes the most sense, given that Whit previously says, “teaching your kids how to cook is, like, the number one job of parents,” I would be surprised if Whit’s parents didn’t teach him how to cook at all.

It depends on how early in his life his mom died, I guess. And how long his dad has been away.

...wait, how long has Whit’s dad been away?

And then, an idea struck me. What if Whit’s dad doesn’t know that his wife is dead? What if Whit never told him?

This, of course, being a weightier spin on Whit’s secret, “Your mother is dead. You always omit that truth.” You omit that truth from who, exactly? People who already know what happened, or people like Charles and Teruko who don’t?

As I’m sure many people have assessed, Whit’s secret is comparatively pretty tame compared to the rest of the options. While his classmates are being revealed as manipulators and murderers, all we learn about Whit is a sad fun fact. But if Whit’s secret, in full, is actually “You never told anyone about the death of your mother, not even your father,” it becomes a much more severe secret.

Now, you might be asking, “if that’s the case, why wouldn’t Whit’s secret just say that outright instead?” Mastermind Whit interpretations aside, we have to remember that Despair Time is canonically a TV show. Assuming that Lin is watching his son on the big screen, as long as Whit’s secret says anything about his mom being dead, Lin would learn about his son’s concealment of the truth.

However, the question of why Whit’s secret wouldn’t be phrased like that for the sake of the other students remains. My best theory is this: it’s to make Whit suffer. I’m sure we all remember David’s heel turn in Chapter 2 Episode 11. After spewing his hateful monologue, he expresses how freeing it is to finally speak his mind.

For Whit, by not explaining what his secret is in full, they don’t give him the catharsis of expressing all of his thoughts and pain out loud. They still provide him the hopeful option of being able to salvage part of his story amongst the other students. While the motives of the TV show haven’t been expressly stated, it’s a pretty common killing game move to give the students hope just to rip it away and create despair, right...?

It’s like how Hu mentions that some secrets might be phrased unfavorably to make the students look worse. In this case, Whit’s secret could be phrased favorably with the intention of making him stressfully walk the edge of revealing the full truth and keeping it hidden. And, knowing Whit, there’s no way that he wouldn’t at least take a shot at repression.

Getting back to the secret itself, the way Whit talks about his family life also makes me believe that this could be the case. Through his dialogue, we learn that Whit lives a very solitary life. He talks about no one being home often enough to keep a pet, how lonely it would be to stay in the house all day, and how he’s befriended his neighbors’ dog and considers her family (but not the neighbors themselves?).

Sure, Whit is (barely) college aged, and college kids are typically considered able to live on their own. But Teruko and the gang believed that they were about to head to the Hope’s Peak entrance ceremony, so as far as Whit remembers, he only graduated high school very recently. If Lin knew that Elizabeth was dead, would he really leave his grieving teenage son completely alone in another country?

Because Whit’s dad doesn’t seem to currently reside within the United States, as far as I can tell. Maybe it’s just the Beetlejuice: The Musical fan in me, but I have to imagine that letting your kid grieve their dead mom whilst being completely isolated would be a very bad idea.

It would make sense to me if the reason why Lin allows this is because he doesn’t know. If Whit didn’t tell him the truth, either because it was too painful for him to say or because he didn’t want to jeopardize his father’s work abroad. According to Whit, his dad is “a real quiet dude,” so I could believe that he wouldn’t have any coworkers come up and console him for his loss, letting the cat out of the bag. The fact that he’s abroad further facilitates that idea-- how would Lin’s foreign coworkers even learn about Elizabeth’s passing when he himself doesn’t know?

You could run into problems if Lin went too long without seeing his wife, and started to wonder where she was. However, if Whit did something like impersonating his mom via text, it would be more possible for Lin to simply not notice that he hadn’t seen his wife in a while.

Venus also came up with the possibility that Lin is actually more of a deadbeat. He “works overseas” because, well, he lives there, having left his family behind. Whit could dye his hair blond not just to look like his mom, but also to look less like his dad. His skills as the Ultimate Matchmaker could have began at home with their split. It sounds a little implausible, but we know that Whit likes to ignore things that make him uncomfortable and put a positive spin on them.

At any rate, I believe this is a hypothetical worth considering. I definitely want to keep a closer eye on Whit’s backstory going further, as it’s possible that it’s not exactly what it seems.

[thebadjoe]

This is DRDT Chapter 2 Spoilers, btw!!!

Ve : Hello! Hopefully we’re not stealing thebadjoe’s thunder here[...]

Nah, it's fine, @venus-is-thinking and @accirax! I'm just a regular, yet dedicated DRDT theorist doing my own thing, so go ahead and do your thing! I welcome it! The earlier people involve themselves in figuring out the murder mystery in more details, the better.

1m : Yes, yes! Come, come, we always accept new members in the crazy train! It was getting boring, just me and thebadjoe.

@1moreff-creator HUH???!! Boring?!!!! How dare you-

*clears throat* Now then, let's take a look at both of your theori-

Oh damn, those are wild theories. Much wilder than my own theories.

Alright... so let me get this straight. You two believe that Nico is the person responsible for the attempted murder on Ace, but you also believe that Ace only received neck wounds to the front of his neck. To explain the lack of wounds to the back of the neck on top of the gaps on the wire(s) that didn't have blood, you came up with something wild and convoluted for the murder mechanism/setup to explain those issues. Did I get this right? Well then...

Wow, I'm actually at a loss of words. I don't know if I should be impressed or angy that you surpassed my expectations. Tackling on the Ace murder theory that I initially thought my theory would be the only possible solution. Let me explain.

I spent a pretty long time trying to solve this cursed mystery being the attempted murder on Ace. Whether I believe it was Nico that did it or not didn't matter for me. I needed to learn how this crime could've been possible with only these given clues.

I... also tried to come up with wild methods to explain a lot of things. The main thing was trying to understand how the murder mechanism worked to inflict wounds on the neck, both the front and the back. But no matter what I tried to come up, I was never able to explain why there was lack of blood anywhere else nor why the mechanism was only a one way trip, with no way to loop it because of the fact that the wire is attached to the fan.

Until I realised that this mystery is a lot simpler than we think. Just wrap the wire around his neck multiple times, let the fan pull it, the wrapped wire would remain stuck around the neck because it'd work as if they were tangled together. That way it would easily explain why there were only blood on the wire, his neck and nothing else (Disregarding everything else you discovered for now, I'll get to it later). And then, bit by bit, I managed to connect every other relevant clue to my theory, things just clicked, it made sense.

So I thought that was the end of it, there was no other way to explain this mystery. That was the solution.

Yet, you two, sorry, you three went ahead and came up with such crazy theories that went beyond my imagination to explain your latest discoveries and your own beliefs. Don't get me wrong, they're creative and I admire that. But I just can't help but feel like there's something really off about these two theories and I've got to point it out.

I'm not sure if I'll give my comments to various points of your theories, but at the very least, there are a couple things I need to clarify in regards to the mystery of the attempted murder on Ace.

Just as a side note, for certain quotes that I may be responding to, since I'm going against both theories at once, to avoid confusion, I put 1m to refer to @1moreff-creator's quote and I put Ve to refer to @venus-is-thinking's quote. Alright, here we go!

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CLARIFICATIONS

The wire(s)

We don't actually know what's the origin of the wire. I may have claimed that it could be copper or brass wire, which made people conclude it might be metallic wires. But honestly, we don't really know what kind of wire it is.

We don't know if it's insanely sturdy to the point where it would take ridiculous amount of force to break it. It's possible that it could very well be a single wire that'd be sturdy enough to break from the accident, the bang that Teruko and Eden heard.

Basically, all I'm saying is that we don't have concrete proof that this is a specific type of wire, so anything could work.

The tape

You guys make certain claims which usually translate to something like "there was a lot of grippy tape available for Nico to carry out their murder/crime plan, then that extra tape would be thrown away because there was blood on them or something like that".

Or maybe I'm just interpreting it entirely wrong, but for the sake of clarification, know that the only source of grippy tape we know is the one that was on the bar. It was no longer on here the during the Ace body discovery because it was instead found on the ground, rolled up. At that time, it's the first time we see this roll of tape, so it'd make more sense to conclude that this roll of tape and the one that was on the pull up bar are both the same. Let me bring up some pictures of the gym to make my point.

This is before the crime, this is the only tape we see in here.

This is after the crime. Tape on the bar is gone, yet a roll of tape has been introduced. Therefore, this must've been the same tape. We have no proof that more of that tape came from another place, like the storage room. Therefore, this must be the only kind of tape that exists this chapter, as strange as it sounds.

The turpentine

It's not a big issue by any means, but I feel like there's some confusion or uncertainty about this weapon, so I'd like to put my input on it. About this turpentine...

Based on my own research, I am also aware that the actual turpentine doesn't really knock you out, it seems like a very complex chemical with various side effects. However, since Teruko brought up this specific line, even though it doesn't line up with reality, I believe that the creator intended to have the turpentine only serve as a way to knock out someone rather easily. I don't think we need to overcomplicate ourselves over this custom weapon.

The neck wounds

So you're saying these wounds are only in the front side of the neck because of...

Oh, right. That thing. That little gap in the amount of very few pixels is what gave it away, eh? Well, there are a lot of things to consider in regards to the neck wounds.

There's more than 1 neck slash, so there's definitly some of them that could've gone behind his neck.

Some of these neck wounds are hidden by Ace's hair

These neck wounds are seen on his right side of the neck, which I'm not even sure if eitheir of your murder contraption could reach this far down the side.

It could've been small artistic errors by the creator, it could've been hard to properly show neck wounds to the back.

The blood smear on the wall lines up perfectly with where Ace's body is positioned. I really don't think it's a coincidence.

Here's what I'm deducing from this. The creator made those blood smears on the wall so that people would be able to tell that his neck wounds are also in the back of his neck. The main reason why they did this is mostly so that people would have an easier time solving this mystery. Knowing what his proper wounds are would help in getting closer to what the murder mechanism might've been.

Traces of blood elsewhere

So, I've got another confession to make...

Those blood traces on the tip of his fingers in his right hand? I've known about it for quite some time. At least, I believe I did. When I was working on figuring out the mystery in the gym, I came across it, I was like "I'm gonna focus on the rest first", then I ended up forgetting about it.

A month or two later, as I was having a clash of logic chess with @1moreff-creator, I sent this exact picture to prove some point, I took a glimpse at his glove, I remembered those traces, but I decided not to bring it up just yet.

So yeah... sorry for not bringing this up earlier, I just didn't really know what to think of this very subtle clue nor what to do with it. Thank you @venus-is-thinking and @accirax for bringing this up though. As for the other sign of blood trace...

Blood traces somewhere on his right arm? Eh? Where?

As far as I can look in this picture, I don't see any remote traces of blood in his inner right arm. Heck, let me turn up saturation for quite a considerable amount.

Hmm, I still don't see anything weird about it. It's almost as if... putting on too much saturation would show up new colors that could potentially give us an illusion.

I'm no expert in colors and such, but something tells me that you've cranked up the saturation so high up in the sky, it changed some of his shadows into an almost pinkish color, which would give you the impression that it's blood.

I very much doubt the creator would make people solve a mystery by turning up the saturation level to the extreme to be able to spot one very subtle hint.

I will, however, admit the traces of blood on the tip of his fingers are indeed very real and they're probably really important in solving this mystery.

I'm no longer running away from this. I will fight this with a new theory. I guarantee you that.

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Alright, that's it for the clarifications. I might bring those up every now and then (if I have to) if I'm responding to any specific quotes from eitheir of you theorists.

But before I react to any of those, I've got something else to show you. Something that will probably... surprise you. If my hunch is correct, this could end up being a pretty... troublesome evidence.

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TROUBLESOME EVIDENCE

Take that!

This picture again? You've already explained your points about the neck wounds and the blood on the wall!

That's true, but that's not what I'm going to be talking about. There's something else very peculiar about this picture, but first, let me tell you a little story.

While you guys crafted your own insane theory that would help confirm that these wires only caused wounds to the front of his neck, I was out there thinking if I was actually crazy to theorize these wounds affected all sides of the neck. So I needed some help, I needed a second opinion to see if it wasn't just me who only believed in that possibility.

So I had a chat with a good friend of mine which, to give you context a bit, he never watched DRDT. So he doesn't know anything about the lore and the mysteries behind this fangan and whatnot. I showed him this exact picture to see what he thought of it. However, he is a fan of mystery novels overall and he played/watched the original danganronpas, YTTD, etc. So he has knowledge and experience with murder mysteries.

*gasp* You showed him massive spoilers of this fangan?! How dare you!

Relax. I'm not that sadistic. I asked for his permission. I asked if he cared about any spoilers related to Danganronpa Despair Time. He doesn't really care and that's fine. Fangans are not always for everyone anyways.

So by showing this picture, I asked him if he thought those wounds were only in the front of the neck or also continuing in the back. He claims the more reasonable guess is that they're continuing even though there's not enough information to be conclusive.

But don't worry, I didn't bring this up just to get a witness to confirm my beliefs, that's not the point. What actually matters is what he told me afterwards. Let me give you a brief idea of what the chat log was like.

My friend : one thing that's weird is how the blood is flowing. idk if this is a given, but that blood have flowed onto that jacket if it happened while he was wearing it

Me : Yeah, its a tad odd But probably intended by the creator, they prolly didnt chase after the minute details

My friend : idk, that looks intentional imo. not hard to just extend the bloodstains a little further (or discolor the border if it's meant to look like it pooled there)

Me : Maybe the jacket is absorbant or something?

My friend : you'd still see something it wouldn't look pristine like that (darker splotches like a towel that's partially wet) like to me that signals it was put on after the wound was made

As he said that, I realised that I've forgotten to give him context to this picture... I only showed him this picture and asked him if it was eitheir this or that.

So I proceeded to give him a little bit of context, the thing that it was a failed murder attempt, he's still alive, etc. (I don't think it would've made sense if the jacket was put on after the wound was made for various reasons)

So we exchanged a few ideas unrelated to the picture and then...

My friend : [...]I know nothing about the rest of the case, just seemed very strange for it to just be an oversight.

I realised that I forgot to mention something else, so I proceed to ask...

Me : Could it have been like this if it was very recent? Like the delay of the attempt to being discovered Cause it did actually happen kinda fast

My friend : I mean blood flows fairly fast, if it was meant to pool it'd probably be like a 2 minute window between it happening and being discovered

Me : That sounds about right

Unexpectedly, thanks to my friend, he gave me a new piece of information that would be very helpful in figuring out better what happened with the attempted murder.

To put it simply, the troublesome evidence I'm referring to is the flow of the blood on Ace's body.

I don't get it. Why would it be troublesome for these other theories?

It's simple. According to them, after Nico carried out their crime and inflicted neck wounds to Ace, they proceeded with cleaning up some evidence. Be it throwing away stuff that could be disposable, hiding a bloody cloak temporarily, gently moving the body away, moving some evidence to a different location, etc.

That would definitly take a decent amount of time. If it took that long, the blood would flow onto the jacket. It's very doubtful they would be able to carry out that plan in such a short amount of time, even if it was a failed plan.

Well... maybe they had more time available! There's no proof they would only have 2 minutes before the blood flows further. It could've been an oversight by the creator like you said before!

Actually, I do have proof that the blood flow can be rather fast. Here's my piece of evidence!

!!!

Take a good hard look at this blood flow on his jacket. It went pretty far down. And guess what? I timed the sequence from the body discovery up until Ace wakes up, that sequence took exactly 2 minutes and 5 seconds.

Therefore, it's very likely that the blood flow shown at the time of the body discovery was made in a very short time. Probably even shorter than 2 minutes.

Which means that Nico would have very little time on their hands to take care of certain things to make it look like what we're seeing on the crime scene from Teruko's POV as both herself and Eden come across Nico and a nearly dying Ace in the gym.

On top of that, because of the way the blood is flowing, the upper body needed to remain vertically straight upwards practically during that whole short period of time. If there were some alterations to this, the blood would have a different flow.

How's that for evidence? Troublesome or should I say... decisive?

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The best part in all this is that I'm not even done with my reblog. I've still got some other points to talk about regarding your theories on top of explaining a few things that would solidify my own theory in regards to this mystery.

Next up on the list is going over a few things you said in your theories. It won't be in any perticular order and anything that's affected by eitheir the clarifications or the troublesome evidence, I'm not going to talk about it since it would just become redundant on my end.

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CROSS EXAMINATION

Nico's cloak

1m : Nico's usual cloak (that's what it's called, right?) is nowhere to be seen. Where the hell it went is a fantastic question, but the fact they don't have it in the first place could mean a lot of different things.

I know you three concluded that because it was missing, that it must've been used in the crime scene (mostly to cover parts that would leave bloody traces or to wipe off something), but there's a few other ways to explain why Nico didn't have their cloak.

The main reason though, in my opinion? Well, they simply didn't wear that cloak during that night of the attempted murder on Ace.

That's dumb. Why would they do that?

It's hard to say, really. However I do have a couple ideas. Knowing that they were about to murder Ace, they probably didn't carry that cloak with them because it's something very precious for Nico and they don't want to dirty it.

It could also represent some kind of change in Nico when they don't wear that cloak. It could be some kind of split personality, one of which that makes them go bloodlust mode or something, which would be represented by the missing cloak.

Lamer explanation, but it could be because they were cleaning that cloak in the washing machine at the time.

In any case, it doesn't need to be part of the crime scene to explain why it's not present at that time. Of course, there's no way to prove that they didn't wear it at the time, but neitheir can you prove that it was used in the crime scene.

For all we know, this could be something we'll learn more about in future chapters, hopefully chapter 3.

The toppled weight rack

Ve : ...what this extra weight meant to us is that the position of the weight rack must be extremely intentional. There’s no reason that anyone would go to the effort of moving something so heavy unless they really needed it in a specific place.

1m : Thanks for pointing this out, when you put it like that, this thing absolutely has to be involved in the murder.

Not necessarily. Even if it's really heavy, there are ways for Ace to move it. But first, let me state that there's a possibility that Ace is stronger than he seems.

There's no concrete proof, but he is an athlete considering he's the ultimate jockey and seemed pretty confident in chapter 1 in helping open the elevator door with Teruko and participating in the arm wrestling contest. Well... perhaps overconfident.

What's important however is the aftermath of the arm wrestling between Ace and Xander.

Xander destroyed him, no doubt. Xander also broke through several inches of wood with that kind of power, yet... Ace's hand is only bruised from something like this?

Maybe it could've been for comedy purpose only, but still, for someone to arm wrestle against someone as powerful as Xander who managed to arm wrestle so hard, he destroyed a bunch of wood from the table, wouldn't that make Ace seem pretty tough? I think it does.

Does that really make him strong enough to move roughly 250lbs of filled weight rack?

Probably not, but it's not an impossibility. Hey now... don't look at me like that! There's a reason why I brought this up and I'm getting there. Let me give you a slightly revised theory regarding the moved weight rack.

Ace was working out at the evening of DAY 2, but he moved that weight rack to match his work out preferences. He was probably not strong enough to drag the whole thing, so he moved multiple weight plates at a time from point A to point B. Then, he moved the emptied weight rack from point A to point B and placed back the plates at the corresponding spot.

What's the point of that? Why didn't he only pick the plates he needed close by the bench?

Same answer as before : workout preferences.

Ace could very well be someone who likes to keep things tidy and close by his "workout station". He's not like these douches you see on the internet that leaves their weights scattered all around the gym. So he might be obsessed with getting things clean when it comes to working out, who knows? What matters is that Ace could've moved the weight rack on his own.

Why was it toppled over if he wanted to keep things tidy and clean? It's clearly not normal!

It's the exact same answer as before : workout preferences!

This weight rack can definitly function like this. I believe that was built this way so that you can rotate it in this manner as shown in the picture above. That kind of rotation is part of Ace's workout preference. So he needed to take out all those plates before rotating it. While he's at it, he figured he may as well move it much closer to the bench.

That's pretty much the best way I can explain why the weight rack was moved without it being related to the crime. Because... no matter how much you try to think about it, there's absolutely no way to link the weight rack with the attempted murder. Trust me, I tried.

Nico thinks they're alone

Ve : So, instead of hitting the ground, the fan hits the bench (BANG!). Then, the force of that causes the bench to fall over, hitting the ground, with the fan still on top of it, which also causes Ace to fall over (the clattering). Nico probably wouldn’t think this was a huge deal, believing everyone else to be asleep by now. 

1m : The fan-wire's noose and possibly the noose around the weights come undone, but the fan falls and makes a huge noise. The culprit doesn't pay attention, since they believe no one's on the floor.

I'm gonna have to stop you both right there. There's a contradiction in both of these statements.

You claim that Nico believed that there was no one else but them and Ace on that floor, right? Well, there's definitly something wrong about that.

Because of Teruko and Eden? There's no way Nico could've known they were here.

No, that's wrong. The only way they couldnt be aware of the girls' presence is if they were deaf. However, as far as I'm aware, Nico is not deaf.

What the hell are you saying?

The walls aren't soundproof. Nico should've heard Teruko and Eden talking in the dress up room and when they approached the elevator.

You don't even have pr-

We have plenty proof showing that the walls aren't soundproof and that conversations can be easily heard.

There's the scene with Ace, Levi and Teruko in the gym. Ace leaves at some point, Levi asks Teruko for advice to fix relationship with Ace. While she's explaining that it's best to abandon him, she makes this comment about Ace, which he heard and quickly comes back.

Then there's the flashback scene from Ace's POV. That was presumably during the evening on DAY 3 according to many people. What's important to learn form both instances is that any conversations can be heard from both inside the gym and outside the gym.

Therefore, there's absolutely no way Nico didn't notice Eden and Teruko's presence. Nico should've heard them. So no, they didn't think they were alone, which makes their actions very questionable (according to your theories).

While I'm at it, another interesting thing to note is from the conversation between Teruko and Eden at night up until the banging noise from the gym, Teruko and Eden didn't really hear anything else strange, did they?

Little sidenote

1m : Although, now I'm curious as to what you think of my "Levi as an accomplice" theory for that murder. I know you probably don't agree with thebadjoe, seeing as their theory requires Eden to be Ace's attempted murderer, and you clearly believe that to be Nico. That's besides the point, though.

I see what you're trying to do. You're trying to recruit more theorists to join your cause in the hopes of defeating me, huh?

Ha! Foolish! It'll take more than that to defeat me!

Unimportant correction

1m : Nico runs away, and probably picks up their cloak on the way as to at least have the slightest argument for their innocence. Since the lone pieces of tape are there, Nico probably picks them up too.

Ve : Makes sense and is almost certainly true, given that MonoTV says one night later that it took the trash out two nights ago. That means anything from this murder that landed in that trash can would’ve still been there as of the Arei investigation, so that’s definitely not where it ended up long-term.

I suppose it doesn't really matter as a whole in regards to your theories, but I'd like to make a little correction in regards to what was in the trash.

According to Teruko, anything that was thrown in the trash from the night of DAY 2 (the time of the attempted murder on Ace) and earlier would've been disposed of by monoTV.

Not really gonna use that for my revised theory, but I figured I should let you guys know the facts.

The length of the wire

Ve : So, the fan wire. This thing is now super long! (Just pretend. Please. We could not figure out how anything could work with such a short wire.)

Sorry to say, but if I were to let my imagine go wild and dangerous, I could pretend that the gym is much smaller than it seems and that every prop is much closer by each other. I could pretend that the fridge in the gym has infinite size storage. I could pretend that this broom has magical properties that Nico has the ability to make it fly because they're secretly the ultimate Witch. You get the idea.

While I cannot guarantee that the wire we're seeing in the video is the actual proper length of it, I believe that we shouldn't doubt it too much eitheir. I think its length is as important as any other clues we found in that crime scene.

The one thing I believe we can let our imagination go wild however is the type of wire that was used. There's no proper way to tell what kind of wire it is aside from its color, length and a few other properties.

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I think I covered everything that caught my attention in those posts. There's probably some things I missed, but that's alright.

For now, it's time for me to talk about my revised theory.

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BEHOLD MY THEORY

For those who are a bit new with my work, my theory is different from theirs in regards to the case of the failed murder attempt on Ace. However, we seem to get into the agreement that Eden is the culprit for the murder of Arei.

While they believe that Nico is the person responsible for the attempted murder on Ace, I believe that the culprit of that crime is the exact same culprit of the murder of Arei : Eden.

What would be the reason for coming at such a conclusion?

There's a variety of reasons, but I'll only mention the 3 most important ones.

First, the murder scheme for the Ace case uses a certain murder mechanism while the Arei case also uses a murder mechanism (more complex, granted, but a murder mechanism nonetheless). Seems kinda odd as a coincidence, right? Eden works with clocks and such, which uses mechanisms, so it's not wrong to guess that both crimes may be connected.

Second, she was found in the dress-up room at nighttime, during the attempted murder on Ace. That room is close by the fitness room. To me, it seems really suspicious that Eden would be roaming in that room AT NIGHT for the sake of getting Teruko's uniforms back to Teruko's dorm. I don't believe that story one bit.

Third, my whole theory would make much more sense if Eden was the culprit for the attempted murder on Ace since it's practically all connected together. I'm not gonna elaborate much on that point, but if you're curious to find out what I'm talking about, I'd recommend you to check up my home page and read all parts of my theory (especially part 3).

With that out of the way, let's get started! For your information, I'll only mention events related to the attempted murder on Ace.

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In the evening of DAY 2, Ace was working out in the fitness room, he's the one who moved that weight rack in such a seemingly odd position for his workout preferences. At some point, he gets out of the gym for X reason related to the murder case of Arei.

All of a sudden, Eden sneaks up on Ace and knocks him out with turpentine. She then drags him eitheir to the gym or hid him in the changing room for a temporary time before dragging him back to the gym when no one would be around on that floor, whichever seemed less risky at the time.

During nighttime, she brings up wires she acquired from X source to the gym (could be some wire she had access to somehow according to my theories). She also grabs a broom and a stepstool from the storage room to the fitness room. By that time, Ace's body should be in the gym as well.

The culprit then begins to work on their murder mechanism. First, she removed the grippy tape from the pull up bar and made a roll of tape with it.

Next, she turned off the switch of the fans so that they would stop rotating, wouldn't want to hurt yourself while setting up the mechanism on the fan after all

Then, she grabbed the stepstool to reach the fan within arm's reach and stuck one end of the wire on the blade of the fan with the roll of grippy tape.

After that, Eden needed to move Ace's body in a proper position so that she'd be able to reach his neck with the wire. So she placed Ace's back against the wall and tried to get him to remain standing up, which would be increadibly difficult without some materials.

So she placed a bench next to each side of his legs, then placed one weight plate on each foot so that his lower body would stay still. The bigger issue would be the upper body however as it would just simply bend forward without any support.

That's where the next prop comes in. Eden places the broom through Ace's shirt, in his back, from top to bottom. Ace's back is up against the wall with the broom installed. That would make it practically impossible for the body to bend forward which is what the culprit needed.

Now that the body is steady, the culprit proceeds with the next step. She wraps the wire around his neck as many times as needed. No knots needed. I already explained why that wire setup would work in part 4 of my theory post, so I'm gonna move on.

Once that was properly set up, she then removed the broom stuck in Ace's shirt and discarded it alongside the stepstool, the roll of tape and the two weight plates.

Then, Eden would move Ace's body closer to the fan, probably like right under the middle of the right fan. To make sure the body would stay still for the most part, she probably made a few minor adjustments with the wire, maybe she made Ace sit down on one of the benches, who knows?

This part I just mentioned right here is technicly new information, but something I sneakily intended to make it work even back on part 4 of my theory. So if you had any questions on that end before, then here's your answer!

With this, the murder mechanism was complete. The only thing left to do is to probably clean up the crime scene and possibly get rid of a few evidence. Then once that's done, she would turn the switch of the fan back on and let the mechanism do the dirty work for her while she's away from the gym.

How would you explain Nico's presence in the fitness room, then?

I'm getting there. It is a failed murder attempt, after all.

So as Eden was about to do one of her final steps to her plan, she suddenly hears the sound of the elevator. What a terrible timing! She doesn't want to get found out, so in a bit of a panic, she quickly turns on the fan and exits the fitness room to proceed to hide in the dress up room before someone shows up and she gets caught red handed.

Then it's at this time that Nico has entered the second floor! They're different from the usual however. They're not wearing their cloak! The reason why is because of their incentive to murder Ace, which probably turned them into a different person, like some kind of monster looking for their desired bloodlust. Could be represented by their missing cloak, who knows?

Nico probably has a gut feeling that Ace must be in the fitness room, or maybe they were looking for him all around the first floor and figured the gym was the next best bet. Whichever it is, they entered the gym.

That was totally unexpected of Eden because you see... she wasn't around when the bullying that led up to Nico threatening Ace that they'll kill him afterwards happened. She was busy doing something else, so that wasn't part of her plan at all.

Shortly afterwards, Teruko has entered the second floor! She's looking for her spare uniforms since she forgot to bring them to her dorm. That's when she comes across Eden in the dress up room and we get the following.

Then Teruko's like : "What? No I'm not. What are you talking about?"

(Looking a little bit nervous there, Eden!)

Teruko then ignores the question to instead ask her what she's doing here at a time like this? Uh oh, Eden's in a bit of a trouble here. But thanks to her quick wit, she spotted Teruko's spare uniforms very recently and made an insane deduction out of this, which would be the perfect excuse for her to be here at such a suspicious time.

Then they exchange a couple words, then head to the elevator until they both hear the loud BANG! You pretty much know the rest of that side of the story. Now then, let's talk about what happened with Nico and Ace ever since Nico entered the fitness room because that's where it gets really interesting.

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So Nico enters the fitness room and what do they see? Well, they see Ace about to be murdered by this murder mechanism, of course! They get to witness him being so helpless, about to be murdered, with wounds on his neck starting to show up from the tightening of the wire and so on.

It's quite unclear what was their train of thoughts at the time, but considering the evidence we have, the fans were turned off at some point. So it's only logical to deduce that Nico must've turned off the switch.

Why would they do that? They were looking for Ace because they wanted to murder him.

That's exactly the reason! They didn't just want him to be dead, they wanted to murder him. They turned off the switch so that they could get the finishing blow themselves by turning the switch back on.

But that's impossible! The fans were switched off according to your theory!

True, but there's a simple reason why didn't turn it back on. They suddenly heard voices from the room across : Eden and Teruko talking in the dress up room! That was quite unexpected and dangerous for them.

Why would that be?

Well, since Nico had the intention of murdering Ace, it's also possible that they wanted to get away with it or at the very least not get caught.

So there's two possibilities as to what they had planned next. They eitheir wanted to wait for the girls to go back to the first floor just in case that their murder attempt would create noises and get their attention OR they wanted to wait for the girls to go back to the first floor so that they could turn back on the switch and abuse the BDA rule.

Abuse the BDA rule?

It's something I probably mentioned in part 4 of my theory posts. Basically, Eden's whole reason why she wanted to create such murder mechanism was to make herself look innocent by creating a loophole with the rule since it states that the first 3 people who didn't witness the murder will trigger the BDA.

So if she was away when the murder mechanism was finishing the job, then she wouldn't have witnessed the murder. Nico probably realised this upon seeing this murder mechanism.

Alright... so what did Nico do in the meanwhile?

It's simple, they waited.

Waited?!

That's right! They waited! Nico turned their head to the door and probably listened closely to the conversation, to make sure they'd be able to get a good feeling as to when would be the right time to turn the switch back on.

If Nico only needed to turn the switch back on to commit murder, then your entire theory is wrong! How would you explain the blood on Ace's fingertips on the gloves?! It's impossible to explain it with your theory. It's over!!!

....heh!

heheheh!

hehehehehehHEHE!

HEHEHEHEHEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

You still haven't realised yet? Can't you see what would be the perfectly logical deduction from this? You really think that's impossible?!

hahahahahah.... hah! Oh man, this is fun! I'll gladly explain it to you how to solve this problem that seems impossible to solve.

It is true that if Nico only needed to press the switch of the fan to commit the finishing blow, then there wouldn't be any point for them to tamper with the crime scene, especially applying blood on Ace's fingers for some reason.

So with the process of elimination, whenever you remove the impossibility, whatever remains must be the truth. That's how a murder mystery usually works, after all.

So how did Ace get blood on his fingers? There's only one answer to this.

Ace is the person responsible for getting blood on his fingers. He touched the bloody wires with those fingers.

W-Wh-Wha-wwWHAAAAAATTTTT????!!!! ACE????!!!!

Yes! In that moment, Ace was awake and conscious.

HUUUUUUHHHHHH?! HOOOW?!

Well, it's pretty simple actually. We know that Ace's alive. He woke up sometime after Teruko's investigation, when Ace was clearly wounded. He must've woken up from the wounds since they're very painful after all.

So with that in mind, it's not wrong to think that he could've gone back to consciousness very shortly after receiving those wounds. Which would be around the time Nico entered the gym and turned off the switch.

BUT THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!!! HE WAS CLEARLY UNCONSCIOUS WHEN TERUKO AND EDEN ENTERED THAT ROOM!!!

Maybe he was... or was he really? To explain it properly, I would first need to explain the origin of the loud BANG! Initially, I thought it would've been Nico with my previous theory. They would've somehow mess something up with the crime scene, which would break the mechanism and cause the loud bang. Nico would've unintentionally save Ace.

But with my new theory in mind, that doesn't work anymore. After all, Nico only needed to turn on the switch to commit murder, since there was no need for them to tamper with the crime scene, it's very likely that they didn't ruin the murder mechanism and caused the loud noise.

So now, we gotta ask ourselves : who created the loud noise instead?

Well, there's of course only one answer to this : Ace is the person responsible for the loud noise that Teruko and Eden heard.

Next up, we gotta figure out how Ace managed to make such a loud noise. I already gave a few hints with what I said earlier, but based on what we saw on the crime scene, there's a perfect explanation for this.

When Ace woke up, he found himself standing up against his will, pain being really noticeable on his neck. He also sees Nico further up by the door. Wondering what was that pain on his neck, he decided to touch his neck (which would be when there was blood on his fingers). Upon seeing the blood, Ace quickly realises that he's in deep shit. Nico's about to murder him, he has to do something.

WOULDN'T NICO HAVE NOTICED THAT ACE WAS AWAKE?!

Nope, not necessarily.

Remember, according to my theory, they were listening to the girls' conversation. Therefore, they had their back turned away from the crime scene. Which also means they had their back turned away from Ace. They could definitly miss Ace coming back to consciousness.

Upon realising the situation that he's Ace, he needed to think of something and really quick.

COULDN'T HE HAVE JUST SCREAMED FOR HELP? ACE MOST LIKELY HEARD THE CONVERSATION WITH THE GIRLS TOO!

Maybe, maybe not. I personally think that it was probably not the wisest thing to do for 2 reasons.

Those neck wounds were fresh, he might've been unable to talk temporarily because of how much it hurt at the time.

It was probably a risky bet. He didn't know what to expect from Nico. Maybe he figured that if he tried to shout, Nico would hear it and then they would possibly do the finishing blow really fast since Nico wanted to kill him, after all.

With that out of the way, let's move on.

From what we learned so far. We know that in this situation :

Ace is in danger

He's stuck in some kind of mechanism

He can see Nico listening to the girls' conversation

He can also hear the girls' conversation

He can see that Nico hasn't noticed him yet

With these facts in mind, he came up with a pretty bold solution.

Ace used his hands to break free from the wire stuck to his neck. He also pulled with all his might and body. He would be most likely tough and strong enough to do this. Upon doing so, it would rip out the fan from the ceiling and it would also split the wire in two.

Because he was pulling, he was also going backwards. So by the time the mechanism broke down, he kinda flew to the wall, probably hitting his head to the wall as well. That would give the sitting down position that we saw in the crime scene.

All of these combined together would be what created the loud noise. That would also explain why some parts of the wire had no blood on it. They were wiped off.

But then, what happened after that?

Well... sometime later, Ace was found unconscious when he should've been conscious already according to my theory. So how do I explain this issue?

There are two possiblities for this. The first one is that he hit his head against the wall which would knock him unconscious again. Would be kind of underwhelming, but it's a possibility.

The second possibility is what I believe is the most fitting one though. Ace pretended to be unconscious. To be more accurate, he pretended to be dead. That would easily explain the issue of him being found seemingly dead by Teruko and Eden.

So when Nico heard the loud noise, that surprised them. They turned back and saw this confusing mess. They wondered : "what the hell happened?" So they got curious and picked up a piece of the wire which would be the exact moment that Teruko opens the door of the fitness room.

THAT'S JUST A LOAD OF BULLCRAP!! YOU CAN'T PROVE IT!

No, I can definitly prove it.

Most of you didn't believe in my previous Ace attempted murder theory because Ace wouldn't have seen Nico attack him. So he wouldn't have jumped to conclusions and started accusing Nico.

I gave a fairly good explanation to this by saying that when he bullied them, Nico's death threat really got to him which made it really memorable for Ace.

But then that wasn't enough. You claim that Ace could've jumped to conclusions and thought that Eden and Teruko might've been responsible if he didn't see his attacker.

Or Ace would think that it might be Levi because of what happened in the past. Whichever it is, not a lot of people were convinced in my reasoning.

So you know what? Fine! Let's pretend that Nico's threat wasn't enough for Ace to jump to conclusions. It doesn't bother me anymore thanks to this new version of my theory.

The main reason why Ace is so convinced that Nico's the person responsible for almost murdering him is because he saw them with his own eyes in the crime scene. Anyone would think that Nico's the killer if they were in his shoes. It's perfectly reasonable for Ace to think that Nico really tried to kill him.

If that wasn't enough, I have another way to prove my theory to be possible.

Let's focus on Ace in that picture. If Ace touched the bloody wires to get out of this mechanism, his hands would have blood on them. Although, you can only see his right hand.

Or rather, you can only see blood on his fingers. You can't quite tell if there's also blood on the palm of his hand because of the convenient angle. On top of that, his left hand is completly hidden from view. It could have blood on them as well.

Later on, when Teruko was done investigating from afar. After Eden wanted to "assist" in the investigation as well, Teruko got closer to Ace to inspect his body and then this happens...

There are two very important obversations we can get from this.

Firstly, look at how quick he woke up and how loud he shouted. At first, I thought it was another comedic moment, but upon closer look, it would make a lot more sense if he was already awake and conscious in that scenario and pretended to be dead earlier. When Teruko decided to inspect his body, he would've been in a bit of trouble if she found out that Ace was already awake. So now was the perfect time to put on an act and react like this (as shown in the picture).

Secondly, look at his hands! It may look like he's holding his neck because of his wounds and how much it hurt, but it could also be for an entirely different reason. His right hand is closed and you can't see the front side of his right hand. He could definitly cover the fact that he already had blood on his hands from earlier.

Then, look at Ace's next sprite during that scene.

(Don't mind the thing I circled in green. It was just something to prove that he has wounds on the back of his neck as well from another reblog. I'm too lazy to retake another screenshot. Sue me!)

Look at his hands yet again. He covered his bloody right hand by holding his neck wounds with that hand instead.

It's not conclusive evidence, but like what I managed to do with most of my points in my theories, these are incredibly convenient clues that support heavily my theory.

And there you go. This... is the truth of the ca-

why.... why would he still pretend to be dead after Nico ran away? The danger was gone!

That's... a good point actually.

The main reason why he pretended to be dead is to make sure Nico wouldn't get the wrong idea and think that Ace would try to escape, which could've turned for the worst... if Ace's mind worked like that, at least.

But now that they're gone, he still kept on the act, even to the point of covering the blood in his hands. What would be the point of that indeed? It's not like if they found out, he would be suspected or anything. He's the victim in this scenario regardless.

The more I think about his character, the more I feel like that the motive for putting on such an act is simply for selfish reasons. To put it in better words, he wants to take care of himself, he doesn't trust anyone else.

So basically, he's just being a selfish asshole! I believe that's good enough of a reason, right?

And that... is the truth of the case of the attempted murder on Ace.

You tried to take that perfect opportunity to commit murder when everything was handed out to you. Am I right, Nico Hakobyan, the Ultimate Pet Therapist!

And you tried to put on an act for your own selfish reasons. Aren't you quite the asshole, Ace Markey, the Ultimate Jockey!

But nonetheless, the real culprit can only be you, Eden Tobisa, the Ultimate Clockmaker!

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And that is all, folks! I hope you guys found this post... entertaining.

Cya!

Trying to figure out the Ace "murder" method

Hey, it's me again!

Seeing the great reception to my Arei murder theory (which, in case you missed, has an important second version (adult warning for Arei's BDA) and a less important third post, and beyond), I decided to try and figure out a method for the Ace murder attempt from episode 6. That and I have a sorta friendly theory rivalry going on with thebadjoe-

Seems like a fun challenge. Let's get into it!

Truth Bullets

Before the murder:

After:

1- Ace's body and wounds: Ace's body is sitting against a wall, slumped over. His neck has what seem to be three slice-type wounds across the front. These are the only visible wounds we know of. His face is angry, but this being Ace, it'd be weirder if it wasn't.

2- Bloodstain on the wall: There is a faint bloodstain just behind Ace's neck. Notably, this is the only trace of blood outside of Ace and the wires.

3- Lone wire: Because I clearly didn't have enough thinking about ropes and pulleys in the other murder, this one involves a wire! That's practically just a sharp rope! Notably, there is blood around a huge chunk of the middle of the cable, and a bit on one of the sides.

4- Wire taped to the fan: There is another piece of wire, wrapped around and taped to the broken ceiling fan. There is blood on the end of the wire not connected to the fan. The roll of tape used is right there. Fun fact, the tape actually dissappears from the background in the middle of the investigation, as pointed out by thebadjoe. Eden took it. This has more to do with the other murder than this one, but it's something to consider.

5- Broken fan: The fan on the right (door view) is broken, and on the ground.

6- Moved benches: Two benches have been moved from their original position. The one on the left is just moved to the side, while the one on the right is toppled over next to Ace. Notably, it's under the broken fan, meaning it must have toppled over before the fan got there.

7- Stool: There is a stool.

I have genuinely no idea where the hell this thing came from. It wasn't in any of the second floor rooms, or any of the first floor rooms we've seen. Was it in storage?

??????????????????

Hey, how fucking far did they drag this thing?! I have to imagine it was somewhere else, as there are actually a few doors which have never been opened, such as in the laundry room.

Whatever, no one cares. There's a stool, let's live with that.

8- Broom: There is a broom. I really hope they didn't get this from storage as well.

9- Toppled over weight rack: The weight rack has been moved closer to the... lifting bench thing, and now lay sprawled across the floor. Yeah, I got no idea about gym terminology.

10- Isolated weights: There are two small weights off to the side. Yep, they sure do exist.

11- Non-functioning fan: The fan on the left isn't moving (I know you can't tell from the picture, but trust me on this). This is especially strange, as we see the same fan moving the next day when Teruko and Rose go to the gym, despite the other fan still being gone.

12- Clean pull-up bar: The tape which was around the pull-up bar since the first day the second floor opened has disappeared.

13?- ???: So, uh, I got no idea what's going on in this general area. Apart from the bench press bar apparently disappearing, there seems to be a whole ass chunk of a mirror missing, which makes absolutely zero sense. It almost looks like someone took a bite off the damn thing, but I don't think anyone here eats glass, not even MonoTV. I imagine this is an animation error, but I'll point it out anyways in case it's somehow important.

14- Rose's account: During her painting session with Nico, her turpentine went missing.

15- Teruko's account: "[Ace] stayed unconcious for much longer than can be explained by blood loss or asphyxiation." Teruko believes this means Ace was likely knocked out with Rose's turpentine. Now, why she believes this when turpentine inhalation cannot cause unconciousness, only vomiting and nausea at worst, is beyond me. But since no one ever corrects her, I believe turpentine just... works differently in the DRDT universe.

16- Banging noise: Shortly before Eden and Teruko entered the crime scene, they heard a strange banging noise which came from the gym, followed by a clattering sound. This noise is... definitely strange, and in fact, I struggle to say what exactly it was. Since it doesn't match anything perfectly, I guess it must either be the weight rack toppling, or the fan falling. Also, this noise must have been caused by Nico, as no one else ran out of the gym afterwards.

17- Nico's missing cloak: Nico's usual cloak (that's what it's called, right?) is nowhere to be seen. Where the hell it went is a fantastic question, but the fact they don't have it in the first place could mean a lot of different things. Also to note, Nico doesn't have any blood on them.

I believe that about covers it. Let's see what we can manage. Also, I apologize in advance if it seems like this isn't very structured, I'm doing the best to explain my reasoning step by step.

What was Nico doing?

This may seem like an odd question to start with, but it's actually one which gives way to one of the most fundamental truths of the crime. One which I need to establish before getting anywhere in terms of theorizing. No, I'm not about to claim Nico didn't try to murder Ace, It's something else.

The answer seems obvious at first: they were clearly killing Ace, right? Well, not so fast. Nico was standing quite far from the body, yet holding a wire covered in blood. It almost looks like they just stumbled into an already established crime scene and were just investigating. Some claim this means Nico wasn't the one who set up most of the crime, but we have to remember this line:

Charles: But did you not intentionally try to make a serious attempt on Ace's life? Answer honestly.

Nico: Y... Yes...

Nico admits to, at some point, having tried to kill Ace. Of course, this isn't conclusive, but there is actually something else which makes me believe Nico might be the sole culprit of this almost-murder. A piece of evidence I haven't seen anyone mention in detail before.

The isolated weights.

What's the issue with this weights? Well, there are three truths which make them particularly strange.

1- The fact they're isolated means they were likely involved in the murder method.

2- They are decently far from any other piece of evidence.

3- They are neatly stacked on top of each other.

The fact they're neatly stacked means someone put them like that intentionally, yet they were clearly involved in the murder method. However, if they were involved in the method, how are they this far from everything else?

Well, let me answer those questions by raising others in return. Why is Ace so far from the wires, and why was Nico holding one of them? Why are the weights the only thing in the room which seem to be placed intentionally, when everything else is all over the place? When did Nico lose their cloak? What did they do to make that banging noise?

All these questions lead me to one answer. Nico wasn't actively trying to murder Ace when Eden and Teruko entered the scene, they were cleaning the crime scene. This could include moving Ace's body around, screwing around with the wires in a way which broke the fan, and, the important part, instinctively stacking the weights on top of each other. Maybe because Nico was getting bothered by the general mess of the room, or something like that (I know I would try to put some order in the room if I was nervous), and the weights were the easiest things to move around.

Whatever the reason Nico had for moving the weights, the point is, they did. This movement clearly didn't have anything to do with the actual method, as again, the weights were pretty far from everything, so it seems to me like they were just sorta "cleaning". And the reason everything else is in disarray is because they weren't done when Teruko and Eden got there.

Of course, you may be unconvinced. You may have questions like "why didn't Nico check Ace was dead dead?". But I promise, this will all make more sense as I explain further, so for now, let's assume Nico was cleaning the crime scene.

What does that mean? It means the position of most of the objects in the room could have changed between the time the attack was carried out, and the moment Teruko and Eden entered the gym.

With this possibility in mind, let's take a deeper dive into some of the evidence.

Two Wires on a Bird

(Wait, that's not how the song-)

Now, as you may remember, there were two pieces of wire in the gym; one by itself, and one taped to the fan. A lot of people assume these two were pieces of the same wire, which was broken when the fan went down, probably.

However, I do not believe this is the case. Remember, these wires are metal. From what I could find, their black color could imply they may be aluminum or iron, for example. These have, scientifically speaking, a fuckton of tensile strength. You would need a force of no less than an elephant stampede to break that with tension alone. They can be broken, quite easily with enough effort and tools, but not easily snapped.

No, I believe the answer is much simpler. There were always two wires; there was never an unintentional breakage. If these two things were ever one solid piece of wire, the would-be-murderer must have separated them before they set up their scheme, with whatever they could find. Maybe there could be tools in storage? Not too important.

But, beyond stealing the turpentine, is there really any evidence the killer really thought the method through with that much anticipation? After all, there is this line:

Veronika: Is this what you were envisioning when you tried to kill Ace? That the trial would happen like this, but with Ace instead of Arei dead?

Nico: I didn't... I never thought about it... I...

If Nico is the sole culprit as I'm claiming, doesn't that line mean there wasn't much forethought on Nico's part?

Don't worry, I'll explain that line later. For now, let me show you that the almost-killer absolutely planned the method in advance.

Broken Fans, Broken Hearts

One of the evidence pieces which confused me the most at first was, without a doubt, the non-functioning fan on the left. Why the hell isn't it moving? It's not the other fan falling, as we see the fan on the left working independantly the next day. Clearly, something happened which broke this fan, and it may have broken the other one as well.

Now, I looked through Google to see how ceiling fans work, see if I can figure something funky out. As a quick and oversimplified explanation, they run a current to create magnetic force which moves a rotor which moves the blades. From this, I thought of maybe using magnets to screw them up, but there aren't any magnets we know of in DRDT. I looked into Nico's laser pointer, but that also went nowhere. Despite the lack of evidence of its use, J's remote was the only thing I could think of for a while.

That is, until I realized one fundamental truth:

I'm an idiot.

The answer is much, much simpler. And it comes from one important question. Why is the tape on the fan facing the ceiling?

Most people, myself included, see a stool, tape, and tape on a fan, and assume the killer used the stool to reach the fan and put the tape there. But the problem is, that would only allow you to place the wire on the underside of the blades. And I'm pretty sure the fan wouldn't do a cartwheel in midair to land upside down.

No, what the tape's position implies is that the killer had access to the upper side of the fan's blades. This means they were likely able to bring the fans down before the murder, and put them back later. However, it's very likely they wouldn't be completely able to fix them, explaining why the left one isn't moving.

I'm not sure how they'd do that, and it sorta relies again on tools from storage, but it doesn't quite matter. There's no point in taping a wire to a fan unless you want it on the fan, aka close to the ceiling, so the killer must have put them back. They likely did this way before the murder, though that raises the question of why the tape would still be there in that case. I do have an explanation, but it'll have to wait for now.

The fact the killer had this ability to take down and somewhat fix the fans makes the left fan's state trivial. They would just take it down to break it, like they did the fan on the right. Of course, the question is why.

I have two answers. The boring one is that the almost-killer thought having one fan moving while the other was broken would be suspicious, and would make Ace more cautious than just seeing both fans broken.

The more fun answer, but one I don't think makes much sense, is that breaking the fans could make the turpentine more effective. Keep in mind Teruko says it is inhaling the fumes from turpentine which can cause unconciousness, and the fans, moving the air around and stuff, would make it harder for the fumes to really be effective... somehow? Again, impossible to know from real life turpentine, as it doesn't work the same as in DRDT. There are a decent bit of inconsistencies with this answer, but eh. As long as Nico could conceivably believe it would help, they may do it. The killers don't have to always know exactly what they're doing.

Alright, Murder Time!

Now that you know how my brain interprets most of the evidence in the crime scene, it's time to get to the actual method. Just so you can get a taste of the insanity required to come up with something which is at least even slightly believeable, here's a highlight reel of the silliest ideas I seriously considered at one point or another!

-Using the broom to beat the shit out of a fan like a piñata.

-Putting the fan on the treadmill and making it run. Don't ask me how this would work.

-Creating a yoyo with the wire and the isolated weights. I almost wanted this one to be true.

-Creating a weird garrote thing with the wires and the weights.

Alright, got it out of my system. Let's actually start now.

The first thing we have to look at is the blood on the wires.

This is, hands down, the part of the crime which drove me the most insane. We need to somehow figure out a way to have blood on quite a bit of the end of the fan-wire, a huge chunk in the middle of the lone wire, and a bit on its right side as well. All of this, while only leaving injuries on the front of Ace's neck, and not the back.

The simplest way to do this would be to "drag" the bloody parts of the wire across Ace's neck, but the question is how to "dodge" the parts which aren't bloody. If you try to think about this for yourself, you're gonna notice this is a lot harder than it seems. The bloody part on the middle of the lone wire is long, but the one on the right is small. Additionally, you have to somehow figure out a way to bloody up the end of the fan-wire, which comes with the problem of "where the hell even is Ace to have his neck cut by this thing".

The first thing I figured out is that the end of the fan-wire was likely attached to the middle of the lone wire, the latter doubled over the point of contact.

(My art is back with a vengeance)

The lone wire could have even been tied around itself to triple over itself, if the length was still too long for the killer's taste. This would also help to explain the multiple injuries on his neck.

However, the problem with this is that goddamn little bit of blood on the right of the lone wire. It can't be solved by just dragging Ace a bit further, as there's a part of the wire which isn't bloody. This took me a while to figure out. In fact, at one point I was close to calling it quits, and just leaving that bit of blood unexplained.

But then, it came to me. A noose!

If the killer made a noose with the wire (let's assume that's possible), and Ace was dragged along the base of the noose, but not the noose itself, then the point of connection would leave a bloody part of the wire which would appear separated from the rest once you extended it out.

(The main takeaway from this "drawing" is the noose, don't worry if you don't exactly understand the triple over thing. After all, I'm not even sure it was actually used)

Of course, now we have to ask ourselves why in the hell is the killer making a noose, then having Ace's neck drag across the base of the noose. The first thing which comes to mind is putting the noose around something, something like the pull up bar. That's sorta the only object near the fan I could see this working with. And we know the other end of the wire must have been on the fan.

This all points me to a theory I was already cooking up beforehand. The killer may have used gravity as a weapon, letting Ace's body lean on the wire as it tenses and untenses to slowly slash at his neck. This is sorta the system I'm envisioning.

Obviously the drawings aren't to scale.

Now, if we miraculously (and it really would be a miracle) get this to work, it could explain those damn bloodstains that stumped me for hours. It could also explain the meaning of those isolated plates: if you manage to secure them to Ace's chest, they would weigh him down in such a way that his neck would press harder on the wire, causing more damage. I'll get to the way I believe it's possible the killer secured them later, but for now, this is the gist of my idea.

Now, there are a significant amount of questions and concerns you may raise just by seeing this, so let me address those.

The first concern you may have is the length of the wire system. Keeping in mind the fan-wire is atteched to the end of the blade, it would practically be impossible for this system to work if the fan spins all the way.

For the fan to actually spin automatically and not break anything, the "fan-out" position must exist only when the blade with the wire is as far away from the pull-up bar as possible. With how large the fan is, the end of the wire would be somewhat over the treadmills, maybe a bit closer to the door. The problem is, as the fan spins and the wire "tries to slack" (remember, Ace's neck pressing against it would mean it never fully slacks), it would end up practically touching the floor by the time the blade gets closer to the pull-up bar. Not to mention the issue of Ace's weight possibly fucking with the fan's automatic spin. In other words, it's impossible to create this system if the fan is spinning on its own.

...The sharper of you will have already realized why that argument doesn't work. It's not a problem, because the fan isn't spinning on its own. We established it earlier, remember? The fan was likely broken before the murder attempt even formerly began. That means the fan is spinning manually.

Perhaps that piñata idea wasn't so far off after all, we just needed a gentler touch. Using the broom and probably the stool, the almost-killer would be able to make the fan move on their whim. And this means there's no reason for them to make the fan do full revolutions. If they just move the blades back and forth a little bit, they would be able to "straighten" and "slack" the wire system however they wanted, and wouldn't need the system to extend all the way to the other side of the room. In fact, they would actually want the system to be as short as possible while still reaching from the fan to the pull-up bar, since that simplifies the positioning of Ace's body, as you'll see later.

But before we get to that, I have to answer something else. This method, you may have noticed, wouldn't exactly leave the deepest wounds, would it? I mean, it could definitively cause bleeding, but the wounds would likely be quite shallow, unless the wire is ultra sharp. It seems like a pretty bad murder system if it only leaves mostly superficial wounds.

Except, who told you the wounds weren't superficial? Remember, Ace didn't actually die from this. And although I'm no expert in anatomy, I believe any neck wound would be fatal if it's deep enough. Thus, whatever the method used was, it could only leave shallow wounds.

That still raises the question of why the killer would do this, but I'll get there. For now, let me give you a sneak peek: I believe the attacker knew Ace didn't die from the wire attack. Intriguing, right?

And if you're worried about the amount of blood being too much for shallow wounds, don't worry. As I said, I believe Teruko and Eden ran into the crime scene a while after the crime actually happened, so Ace must have been bleeding for a while. And I'm no forensic expert, but I believe people who are alive bleed faster than corpses, since the heart is still beating and all that. Essentially, there's a lot of blood only because Ace has been bleeding for a while.

Now comes the hardest part of the visualization, and frankly, the one thing which really makes me doubt whether or not this is possible. With the two benches found on the crime scene, you have to play jenga with them and Ace's body in a way which makes sure his head reaches the pull-up bar in the "fan-out" position, and which doesn't run into issues holding his body up in the "fan-in" position. Considering the height of the pull-up bar, I think the best way to do this would be placing the benches parallel to the wire, and Ace's body kneeling perpendicular to it. You might also want to put a space in between the benches for the knees to bend forward, but I'm not sure.

(Not to scale)

Again, I know this is hard to visualize, and probably harder to pull off, but I don't think it's completely impossible. If anyone has better ideas on how to put the benches, I'd love to hear it.

Now, the sharper of you would realize a problem. As Ace's body flops onto the wire, it's likely going to get pulled forward, but it would also likely slide down towards Ace's chest. That's a problem, since his wounds are only on his neck. However, I have a possible solution for this. You know how I said you could secure the isolated weight plates on Ace's chest to make him press harder onto the wire? Well, if you secure them high and well enough, with tape for example, they might be able to stop the wires from sliding down.

The unfortunate part of this is that we can't be sure if there was any blood on the weights, which there likely would be in this case, since Teruko didn't check them closely. But the bigger issue here is the tape itself: where'd it go?

Well, I'll answer that question with another question. How is there no blood on the floor? Under this method, gravity would make at least a fair bit of blood fall to the floor. There's no way Nico cleaned it up, so how?

Well, if you don't want a liquid to stain a floor, what can you do? You can drape something over the floor so that gets stained instead of the floor. And this is how I plan to explain Nico's missing cloak. Their cloak was draped over the floor in the place where the blood would fall, as to avoid staining the floor with blood. Nico later removed the cloak from the crime scene, possibly leaving it in the dress-up room or somewhere else for the time being.

Now, that sounds ridiculous. Why would Nico leave the crime scene so early? Is there any actual evidence they left at some point?

Well, actually, there is. It's the other place where blood should have been in this method. Since Ace's neck must reach the base of the noose, it would touch the pull-up bar and stain it with blood. Or rather, it would stain the tape on the pull-up bar with blood. The tape which is also missing.

Before.

After.

In fact, this missing piece of tape is extremely important evidence for my theory. The fact it's missing means the pull-up bar was involved, possibly being stained with blood. It also means the culprit took evidence out of the crime scene, which helps explain why Nico is missing their cloak. It also gives credence to the theory the killer taped the isolated weights to Ace's chest, since one missing piece of tape could imply two missing pieces of tape. And- hey! That's why the roll of duct tape is still there! They didn't need it for the fan, since that set up was likely done before the murder attempt as established earlier, so they must have used it somewhere else!

Oh yeah, it's all coming together.

And with this, as you've noticed, we've sorta already arrived at my conclusion on the culprit. Since I believe Nico's cloak was involved in the setup, but was later removed, I firmly assert Nico is the sole almost-murderer. After all, even if the killer knocked out Nico and put them in the crime scene or something, there would be no reason to discard their cloak, and if Nico took it out the gym after waking up, there's no reason to return until they tell someone else about the body.

At this point, I should also address the hidden quote I know is gonna be brought up. Like with every character, if you inspect element on Nico's page you get a hidden quote, which in their case is "why should I own up for the mistakes someone else made?". That makes it sound like they didn't do this, but keep in mind, Nico did confirm having attempted to kill Ace, so I don't think it makes sense for the mistake to be "tried to kill Ace". I actually think this line could be a lot darker. I think this line could imply Ace made the mistakes being referred to, and Nico feels as though they don't have to own up for that. Like, "Ace was the one who fucked around, I just made them find out". Though I am admittedly biased towards evil Nico interpretations, so I can't be sure. Also, this could be about something from another chapter entirely.

Now that we sort of have an idea of how the attack could have gone down, we have to start thinking of the clean up. Unfortunately, this part of the plan wouldn't leave many clues behind, so it's largely speculative. Also worth keeping in mind, I believe this started a while before Teruko and Eden even arrived at the second floor.

The first order of business is taking Ace's body out of the mechanism. They would need to gently let it lean on the wire until the fan wouldn't turn anymore, before quickly stepping off the stool and going over. I'll explain why they're so worried about the body later, but for now, trust me bro. They would push the body off the wire, moving the benches to maneuver better, but their movements are sort of sloppy. This results in the rightmost bench falling over, and when they push Ace up against the wall, they do so haphazardly, leaving behind a small blood stain behind his neck. This is unfortunately the only explanation I have for the bloodstain on the wall which still fits all the other evidence. I say unfortunately because it's a sorta odd explanation for something I would usually consider quite important, but I've had enough trying to explain the blood on the wires, I'm not gonna worry too much about this little thing.

After making sure the body is off the wire, Nico would want to take care of the most incriminating evidence first: their bloodstained cloak. They would probably roll it up into a ball to carry it, though I imagine they may wipe some of the blood off the wires as well. After all, it's the one piece of evidence which can be directly be linked back to them. Since they just took the body down, they would also pick up the evidence closest to them; the bloodstained tape on the pull-up bar and the tape and weights on Ace's chest. They decide to leave the weights in the gym for the time being, and carry out the cloak and the pieces of tape, likely leaving them somewhere else on the second floor. I think one of the changing rooms in the dress-up room is the likeliest spot, or the trash can. They were later planning on disposing of it in a better way, I imagine, but I don't think they wanted to leave the body alone too long, since as I said, they may have known Ace was alive.

Timeline-wise, it's hard to say how much time passes between Nico going out and into the gym, and the moment Teruko and Eden meet in the dress-up room. Especially because part of my other theory is that Eden was actually doing some stuff on the second floor at this time. So here's how I see it; when they return to the gym, they put the weights they had just sort of left there one on top of the other, probably move the stool a little, but most importantly, they start trying to figure out a way to take down the wire system. They initially try things like untying the noose or undoing the knot in the middle, but they're worried about blood getting on them or getting cut by the wire. This hesitation on how to take the wire system down is what explains the time difference between the start of their cleaning and the moment Eden and Teruko get there. I am deeply aware this isn't a very satisfying answer to that issue, but I don't think it's too outlandish, especially since Nico is clearly not in the greatest mental state.

Eventually, they decide they're not going to take the wire system down carefully. To avoid getting blood on themselves, the best way would be to rip out the entire system all at once. I imagine they looped the wire around the broom, and pulled hard in one direction. Do it well enough, and I believe both the noose and the knot between the wires would come undone. However, in doing this, Nico also accidentally knocked down the ceiling fan. This causes the banging noise Eden and Teruko hear.

However, Nico doesn't think anyone else is nearby, and thus doesn't worry about the noise. They just pick up the lone wire (by the parts which aren't bloody), which had flown towards them thanks to their broom trick, and stretch it out... because they felt like it. Yeah, I'm not really sure. But I know a lot of people do weird things to calm themselves when nervous, and Nico is not thinking straight. Fixing up the wire could be something they felt compelled to do without logical reason. I hope this makes sense to you as much as it makes sense to me. Regardless, this is what Teruko and Eden catch them doing. Nico runs away, and probably picks up their cloak on the way as to at least have the slightest argument for their innocence. Since the lone pieces of tape are there, Nico probably picks them up too.

That's basically it for what happened, though you may have noticed there is one piece of evidence I never mentioned. That being the toppled over weight rack. However, there's a pretty simple explanation for this, one I have to give credit to thebadjoe for. Essentially, it's possible the weight rack was moved by Ace to train. If he was bench pressing, it would make sense for him to bring the weight rack closer to the... bench press bench? You know what I mean. And then, when the killer attacked them with turpentine, the rack was toppled over in the struggle. There's unfortunately no way to confirm this, as in the ep 11 flashback, Ace is in the gym but the weight rack is not next to the bench press bench. This doesn't disprove anything; Ace could have just been doing literally anything else. But it unfortunately doesn't confirm anything either.

So, there we go! A series of events which more or less explains all the major evidence in the scene and is (hopefully) physically possible! The bloodstains on the wires were a major pain, to the point I will gladly take anything that explains them more or less satisfactorily, and the missing tape on the pull up bar convinces me I'm (hopefully) in the right track.

... Yeah, so there's still a problem.

Hey, OP, what the fuck?

So, once again my "method before motive" way of theorizing arrives at an extremely complicated system which seems to have no purpose at all. If the fan really is broken as I claim, then there's no way for this to be a remote murder, and a lot of this is just unnecessary. Like, why not just cut Ace's neck with the wires using your hands, the way God (MonoTV) intended? And what the hell did I mean when I said Nico started cleaning the crime scene despite knowing Ace was alive?!

So, here comes the most speculative part of my theory. The reason for the method. Initially, one would assume a system like this would be used to get away with the murder without being caught, like most murders in... well, murder mystery stories. However, remember that line I brought up before? The one where Veronika asks about the trial, and Nico claims to have never thought about it?

I think they're telling the truth. I don't think the purpose of the system is to get away with the murder at all.

And it all comes back to the concern I raised about superficial wounds. Like I said, this system seems odd because it wouldn't be able to cause anything but some shallow cuts. But, what if that's the point?

What if Nico designed this method specifically so it wouldn't kill Ace?

That sounds insane, but think about it. If Nico tries to cut Ace's neck with the wires just by using their hands, it's possible they would get over-excited and accidentally cut too deep, killing Ace almost instantly. If that's not what they want, then it would make more sense to set up a somewhat automatic system which runs less risk of cutting too deep. Maybe.

But, didn't Nico confirm they made a serious attempt on Ace's life, like they told Charles? Yes, but they weren't done.

I believe it's possible Nico wanted Ace to wake up after receiving his neck injuries. That way, he'd be weakened by the blood loss and the pain, but still concious when Nico actually killed them. Under this interpretation, Nico wanted Ace to die knowing Nico was stronger than him, not just by using turpentine and cheap tricks, but just in a straight up fight (though with the handicap of the injuries).

Is that too sadistic? Arguably yes, but we still don't know how far Nico's anger is capable of taking them. I'm probably biased since I am a Veronika kinnie at heart, whose love for a character only increases the more evil and fucked up they are. Still, trust me when I say I went insane trying to figure out any method which could explain the fucking bloodstains on those wires as well as everything else, and this one is the best one I've found so far. It's all I have, I gotta work the characters around it somehow, and this is the only way I can think of.

Nico waiting for Ace to wake up also answers a lot of the basic questions of what the hell was going on when Teruko and Eden entered. If Nico really made a serious attempt on Ace's life, why are they standing so far without confirming Ace is dead? Because they know he's not, and are waiting for him to wake up.

The biggest issues I see here (besides the sheer insanity of the idea) are:

-This method still really isn't that reliable at not killing. However, it doesn't have to be; Nico just needs to trust it more than they do their own hands. And the trust Nico has on their own hands could actually be very little knowing how insecure they is about a lot of things. Not a great argument, but it's there.

-If Nico didn't think of the trial at all, there's no reason for them to take the cloak and tape out of the gym. This is admittedly a much more pressing issue, since a lot of my theory hinges on them doing this. My best answer is that they were working mostly on autopilot. Not actively thinking of the trial, but still knowing in the back of their mind that they would have to hide they did this. It's not great, but it's an answer.

-We don't have evidence Nico even had another weapon on them. If Nico wanted to kill Ace after he woke up, they would have likely brought a weapon with them. However, counterpoint; we know they must have had at least one possible weapon, the turpentine bottle. It's a pretty shitty weapon, but break it open and it would be effective enough. Additionally, the fact we don't know where that thing is implies Nico could have been hiding another weapon, but I'm hesitant to claim this, because again, no evidence.

Overall, I think these holes aren't too big, and considering I'm expecting to get lots of things wrong here, I'm comfortable enough with my answer to put it out there for peer review.

Closing Argument

-During the afternoon, the culprit had to get two custom weapons for their plan. One, the turpentine, they stole from Rose during a painting session. The other, Hu's wire, they simply asked for with some vague excuse, as they had a good relation with her.

-Once they got the wire, they split it into two and went to the gym, a while before the victim arrived. They also brought a stepstool and a broom. With them, they took down the rightmost fan, and ductaped one of the wires' end to one of its blades. They managed to put the fan back up, with the wire hidden on top of the blades. However, the fan didn't spin anymore. The culprit also broke the other fan with a similar method, so as to not make the victim suspicious when they entered the gym.

-The culprit waited until the victim entered the gym for their regular nighttime exercise session, likely after feeding the fish in the relax room.

-The victim, Ace, wanted to do some bench pressing, so he brought the weight rack closer. They didn't notice anything amiss, until the culprit entered the gym.

-With a rag filled with turpentine (maybe; it's impossible to know how people in the DRDT universe would use turpentine as a sedative), the culprit ambushed Ace. Although there was a struggle which knocked over the weight rack, the culprit managed to get Ace to inhale enough turpentine to knock him out. Now, the culprit could have just killed Ace then and there, but that's not what they wanted. They wanted to prove themselves stronger than him, or simply to make them suffer for what he had done to them. In any case, they wanted him to be seriously injured, but not dead by the time the turpentine wore off. Since they couldn't trust their own impulses, they wanted to use a more hands-off method which would ensure Ace would be in serious pain, but not die until the culprit could make sure he felt it.

-Working quickly as nighttime approached, the killer used the broom and stepstool to spin the rightmost fan's blades so as to get the wire taped to it to fall down.

-They tied a noose around the pull-up bar with the other part of the wire. They possibly made the wire triple over itself, and attached the fan-wire to its middle. They also put the non-noose end under the noose on the pull-up bar, for extra stability. For Ace's body, they used the roll of tape to attach two small weights from the rack to Ace's chest.

-With the wire system now hanging slack, like a vine, between the fan and the pull-up bar, they moved the benches under it. The killer also wore a cloak, which they took off and draped over the floor around where they believed the blood would end up.

-They dragged Ace's body to the benches. They propped him up there on his knees, letting his neck press down onto the wire system, specifically a part of the fan-wire. Once they made sure he wasn't going to fall, they quickly made their way to the stepstool, grabbed the broom, and got on it.

-With the broom, they moved the fan's blades manually, not too fast, but with some strength. The wire system pressed hard on Ace's neck, starting to cut his neck as it straightened. Ace's head tilted as this happened, and he started to lean towards the pull-up bar. As his neck dragged over the rolled up lone wire, various shallow cuts opened in his skin. Ace's head touched the pull-up bar's tape, staining it and the base of the noose with blood.

-The killer then slowly allowed Ace's body weight to press on the wire as the fan slowly spun in that direction, the speed controlled by the broom. The wires didn't fall to his chest because of the weights, as well as the slow nature of the descent. His blood stained every spot of the wire his neck dragged across, including the end of the fan-wire.

-The culprit repeated this one or two times, enough to feel as though Ace was sufficiently hurt for their purposes, but not so much they felt he'd die before waking up.

-When they were done, they gently let Ace's body lean on the wire as far as the fan would allow, before dropping the broom and hopping off the stepstool.

-They quickly ran over to Ace, pushing him off the wire system before it could do any more damage to him. In doing this, the bench he was kneeling on fell over, and Ace's body slammed on the wall next to the pull-up bar. The culprit managed to keep him in a sitting position, but the impact with the wall had left a small bloodstain behind Ace.

-The culprit moved the benches a bit to maneuver better around the gym. They took the bloodstained tape off the pull-up bar, retrieved the weights and tape from Ace's chest, and got their cloak off the floor. They used the cloak to wipe a bit of the blood off the wire system, though since it was already covered in blood, some still remained. Not enough to drip off and make a noticeable change on the floor, though. The killer left the weights off to a side in the gym, and ran off with the tape and cloak. They likely hid it somewhere nearby, like the trash can in the hallway or the changing rooms of the dress-up room.

-They came back to the gym at around the same time Eden went to the second floor (this is related to my other theory, don't worry too much about it). They began waiting for Ace to wake up, but their desire for cleanliness guided them in the tense situation. They started trying to figure out a way to take down the wire system without risking injury and without getting blood on themselves.

-A few minutes later, as Teruko went to the second floor and met with Eden, the killer figured out a way to take down the system. They grabbed the broom and wrapped a clean part of the fan-wire around it, before pulling with all their might.

-Several things happened at once. The noose and knot in the point of connection came undone instantly, and the lone wire flew towards the entrance. However, the strength of the pull also took down the fan from the ceiling, making a loud banging noise which could be heard from the hallway.

-The killer didn't think there'd be anyone on the second floor at the time, so they just continued their clean up effort as they waited for Ace to awaken. They grabbed the lone wire by the non-bloody parts and stretched it out, just as Teruko and Eden entered the gym.

-Upon seeing the two girls, the culprit panicked. They dropped the wire and ran away, but still had the sense to quickly pick up their cloak and tape just in case.

-The culprit's plan was to wait until Ace woke up, and in his weakened and pained state, kill him with the bottle of turpentine or some other weapon they had brought with them. And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling girls!

-The missing cloak, paired with the suspicious lack of blood on the scene; the turpentine theft during a painting session with Rose; the motive to kill Ace in this manner; their actions and presence in the crime scene; all paired with an admission of guilt. The method shows only one person with the ability, opportunity and motive to attempt such a heinous murder: Nico Hakobyan, the Ultimate Pet Therapist!

Conclusion

Is this conclusion perfect? By no means. Nico's actions are still extremely erratic and hard to explain, not to mention how difficult it would be to physically get the method to work. However, it's an answer which I feel sufficiently explains all the evidence in the crime scene, which is shockingly difficult. Those damn bloodstains, man.

Still, I imagine I've gotten quite a few things wrong, so this is more a starting point than a final answer. I just think it's solid enough to put out there and get second opinions on it.

Thanks for reading all the way to end! I would give you a cookie, but I'm afraid it's impossible through a screen. Have a good day!

[1moreff-creator]

And thebdajoe enters the fray! Lots of theories for this one, huh? Anyways, good to have you here. Soon, there'll be enough of us to do a whole class trial! You know what the deal is, let's just cut to the chase.

*clears throat* Now then, let's take a look at both of your theori-

Yeah, it be like that. This fucking blood on these goddamn wires, huh? I'm surprised we haven't found a way to set the gym on fire! ... Yet.

Yet, you two, sorry, you three went ahead and came up with such crazy theories that went beyond my imagination to explain your latest discoveries and your own beliefs. Don't get me wrong, they're creative and I admire that. But I just can't help but feel like there's something really off about these two theories and I've got to point it out.

Kinda proud we managed to surpass your imagination, ngl. I always expected you'd have major issues with them, but at least they're creative! I guess you can call them that...

I'm not sure if I'll give my comments to various points of your theories, but at the very least, there are a couple things I need to clarify in regards to the mystery of the attempted murder on Ace.

Alright, let's go!

CLARIFICATIONS

The wire(s)

Basically, all I'm saying is that we don't have concrete proof that this is a specific type of wire, so anything could work.

Oh, yeah. Like I mentioned in my previous reblog, these thing(s) are practically magic, since they're significantly more flexible than actual wire. Two wires works better with our (me and the @venus-is-thinking/@accirax duo) theories, but it is conceivable there was only one wire from the start.

(I hope they don't mind me @ ing them, I figured I should since they're involved here)

The tape

Tape on the bar is gone, yet a roll of tape has been introduced. Therefore, this must've been the same tape. We have no proof that more of that tape came from another place, like the storage room. Therefore, this must be the only kind of tape that exists this chapter, as strange as it sounds.

You know, I used to believe this too. That the culprit must have taken the tape on the bar to use somewhere else. But... that's not how tape works. If you take it from somewhere, it's going to not be as sticky as before. And it would be both quite difficult and unspeakably pointless to roll it up into that roll we see on the floor.

Instead, I think it's fair to assume there was a roll of tape next to the pull-up bar we just never got a good look at before the Ace case, one which the students were meant to use in order to replace the tape already in the pull-up bar if it ever got too gross or something. And in fact, there's evidence there was more tape than just the strip on the pull-up bar.

One thing all four of us agree on is that this tape is the same which was used in the gym. No matter how you slice it, there's no way the tape on the pull-up bar alone is enough to wrap it around this many handlebars. Hell, the tape on the pull-up bar looks like it could only be used for one or two "poles", and there's twelve of them (6 handlebars).

This isn't even counting the little tape used for Arei's wrists, and the little on the fan. Because of the spinny thing, I certify the roll of tape is just a regular roll which was in the gym all along, and had much more tape than the pull-up bar. Incidentally, this means the culprit had no reason to take the tape on the pull-up bar to use somewhere else, and so this tape has to be missing for another reason, which will be an issue with your method when I get to it.

The turpentine

I believe that the creator intended to have the turpentine only serve as a way to knock out someone rather easily. I don't think we need to overcomplicate ourselves over this custom weapon.

Hey! Something we all agree on! Nice.

The neck wounds

-There's more than 1 neck slash, so there's definitly some of them that could've gone behind his neck. -Some of these neck wounds are hidden by Ace's hair -These neck wounds are seen on his right side of the neck, which I'm not even sure if eitheir of your murder contraption could reach this far down the side. -It could've been small artistic errors by the creator, it could've been hard to properly show neck wounds to the back. -The blood smear on the wall lines up perfectly with where Ace's body is positioned. I really don't think it's a coincidence. Here's what I'm deducing from this. The creator made those blood smears on the wall so that people would be able to tell that his neck wounds are also in the back of his neck. The main reason why they did this is mostly so that people would have an easier time solving this mystery. Knowing what his proper wounds are would help in getting closer to what the murder mechanism might've been.

Okay, that's a lot. And you've made your point, there's a non-zero chance there are injuries in the back of his neck. Some of the wounds are covered by the hair, and could be behind his neck, not to mention the suspicious positioning of the blood smear. However, there are important details which make me believe the wounds don't extend to the back:

(How many times are we gonna post this picture in the thread?)

Now, it's extremely hard to tell because of the blood, but if you look closely, you can see the wounds generally get thinner as they get closer to the right side of his neck. This is especially noticeable on the lowest wound, which is decently wide in the middle and gets extremey thin as it reaches the hair. This is important because it implies the wounds don't extend much further. After all, if they get thinner as they go, they're eventually going to disappear, way before they actually manage to wrap around the back. If they actually went all the way around, they would be around the same thinness all around the neck, which is especially true of your method.

However, not all the wounds are perfectly consistent with this, and you could argue it's an artistic limitation. What is harder to excuse, imo, is the lack of blood coming from the back. Because Ace is slumped over, you would expect at least a little bit of his blood to trickle from the back of the neck to the front if he really did have injuries there. Especially considering the neck of his jacket would get in the way of a lot of blood falling down his back. And even if the back itself isn't a problem, the side would be.

I don't exactly have friends close enough where I can just show them pictures of (apparent) corpses and ask opinions, but there are reasons a lot of us assume the wounds are only on the front. Still, I guess I can see it going either way, I won't be too stingy about it.

Though one last thing.

These neck wounds are seen on his right side of the neck, which I'm not even sure if eitheir of your murder contraption could reach this far down the side.

I'm not sure about the venus-accirax method either, but I think my method could. Keep in mind Ace is slumped here, but he may not have been so slumped when he was in the contraption. So the wounds in that image seem to "rise", but they're actually a bit more straight. I think my method could get close enough to where I'm comfortable calling it "good enough". I'm... not sure how to prove it without murdering someone myself, so we're just gonna have to leave it to the imagination.

Traces of blood elsewhere

Those blood traces on the tip of his fingers in his right hand? I've known about it for quite some time.

*Gasp* What a twist! /lh.

As far as I can look in this picture, I don't see any remote traces of blood in his inner right arm.

After closer inspection, I agree. My method was already sorta designed with the lack of blood there in mind, but it's worth noting.

I will, however, admit the traces of blood on the tip of his fingers are indeed very real and they're probably really important in solving this mystery.

Consent! (The Danganronpa agreement kind)

So, we made it out of the clarifications, and so far I think, in my opinion, the last method I presented holds up.

TROUBLESOME EVIDENCE

(The whole speech about blood pooling on the jacket and overflowing)

Right, this is a bit of an issue. Admittedly, it's hard to tell how much blood could flow before overflowing, since it's possible a fair bit of it is getting under the jacket, and just isn't noticeable from outside. Also keep in mind that in my method, the wires pressing on Ace's neck would possibly keep quite a bit of blood from dripping down his neck, so most of the bleeding down would be only after Nico put Ace down on the floor.

Yet still, that's quite a bit of time to be bleeding, especially since the jostling around of putting Ace on the floor could have opened his injuries a bit and caused a bit of extra bleeding. However, I believe there are two big factors you might be failing to take into account: the wounds are quite shallow, and Ace, under our theories, is unconcious.

The wounds being shallow, I explained all the way back in my first post. If they were deeper, Ace would probably be dead. He's not. But the unconcious thing in noteworthy.

CW: Eating disorders

See, when a person is unconcious (a state where they can't feel pain, btw), their heart rate goes down to the lower end of what's considered normal, around 60 bpm (Google numbers, don't look at me). Even more so, people with eating disorders can sometimes have heart rates below those of the average person. It isn't unreasonable to assume Ace's heart rate here is worringly low.

CW over

Why does Ace's heart rate matter? Because the lower your heart rate, the slower your blood flow. When you combine this with the shallowness of the wounds, the amount of blood on Ace's neck and jacket doesn't seem unreasonable. If anything, the amount of blood could actually indicate Ace has been unconcious for a while. I can't know for sure, I haven't bled much in my life and I'm not a vampire (as far as you know).

Essentially, from the CG alone, I don't think it's possible to completely rule out our theories.

But of course, you didn't bring up just the CG, did you?

Take a good hard look at this blood flow on his jacket. It went pretty far down. And guess what? I timed the sequence from the body discovery up until Ace wakes up, that sequence took exactly 2 minutes and 5 seconds. Therefore, it's very likely that the blood flow shown at the time of the body discovery was made in a very short time. Probably even shorter than 2 minutes.

Well, first problem here; the blood splatter doesn't slowly increase across the entire scene, it simply spawns in in the span of, like, two seconds. One moment Teruko is looking at the CG we've been analyzing the whole time, and the next he's screaming he's not fucking dead.

Now, you could argue this is due to sprite limitations. You don't want to adjust the CG several times to indicate blood is flowing. But that also goes the other way; that sprite needs to have enough blood to work even after a few minutes have passed, and Ace is talking to Levi and Teruko and Eden. So we can call it even on that.

But, is it really possible for so much blood to spew out in such a short amount of time? Well... I don't know if all that blood, but at least a solid chunk, yes. There are several factors which could make it possible.

For starters, we go back to heart rate. In both mine and the venus-accirax method, Ace wakes up here. And he's furious. He's angry, he's shouting, he's making abrupt movements such as standing up, he's seeing red. Thus, his heart rate is likely through the roof. Anger alone can apparently increase your heart rate to 180 bpm, practically tripling whatever Ace's unconcious heart rate was. Even if we assume a lower number due to Ace's conditions and the fact he just woke up, we also have to take into account pain and rapid movement, so no matter how you slice it, his blood flow is going to be much, much faster once he actually wakes up.

But even more important than the heart rate is what Ace actually does. He stands up extremely quickly, and shouts as loud as he can. There's a real possibility he made his injuries significantly worse, splashing a good chunk of blood onto his jacket in just a moment. Especially since I'm pretty sure just shouting when your neck is open would likely cause blood to spill even further and faster.

On top of all that, you have to take into account; how much did the dev think about this? Because it'd be unreasonable to expect them to research this much about blood just in the off-chance that some psychopaths on the internet try to figure out how the blood got where it got, and on what time frame. They may have just eyeballed it, and frankly, it's probably better if they did.

The point I'm trying to make is that while this evidence does shake up the theory a bit, it's quite inconclusive, and I'm still comfortable with my answer despite it.

CROSS EXAMINATION

Nico's cloak

The main reason though, in my opinion? Well, they simply didn't wear that cloak during that night of the attempted murder on Ace.

I guess it's possible. Maybe they were expecting a fight, and thought the cloak would get in the way-

It could be some kind of split personality, one of which that makes them go bloodlust mode or something

what

In any case, it doesn't need to be part of the crime scene to explain why it's not present at that time. Of course, there's no way to prove that they didn't wear it at the time, but neither can you prove that it was used in the crime scene.

Alright, sure. That was always a possibility, odd as it may be.

But, doesn't this contradict your earlier logic? You said earlier that the dev may have purposefully put the bloodstain on the wall to indicate Ace had injuries on the back of his neck, but then suddenly Nico's missing an entire cloak and it could essentially be meaningless. It's not too big of an issue, but I do find it a bit odd.

The toppled weight rack

Xander destroyed him, no doubt. Xander also broke through several inches of wood with that kind of power, yet... Ace's hand is only bruised from something like this?

... How does Ace's arm strength relate to his hand endurance? Xander still had enough force coming in to break the table, it's not like Ace's arm strength slowed him down much. At that point, the only thing stopping his hand from breaking would be the strength of his hand bones, which have nothing to do with arm strength.

Anyways, not important. Ace is probably strong enough to move the weight rack like you described, but the question was always "why would he do that"?

You say it's his preference, but I'm not sure if that fully makes sense. My chronic lack of gym experience is starting to become a problem, but as I understand it, no one would want all the weight plates to lift, right? If you're not strong enough for the larger ones, there's no point in bringing them, and if you are strong enough for that (which Ace would probably need to be), you're probably better off sticking to the larger ones, right? Or do I just have a case of the stupid?

And I don't care how dumb Ace is, surely he realizes he doesn't need to move all of the weights. He can just leave the ones he won't use where the rack originally was.

Even more so, it's notable that it wasn't just the weight rack which was moved. Remember Truth Bullet 13(?)? The one where I couldn't tell what had happened with the mirrors? The reason that looks like that is because the bench was moved as well as the rack. What's the point of that? Is it to not move the rack too much? But at that point, surely it'd be easier to bring the bench to the rack than the rack to the bench, right?

Still, I guess I don't know enough about gyms to definitely disprove this.

Nico thinks they're alone

We have plenty proof showing that the walls aren't soundproof and that conversations can be easily heard.

... Alright, now this one is an issue. Especially since the dress-up room is directly across from the gym.

First attempt to disprove it is that both of the examples you gave were of Ace hearing someone else, so maybe he just has really good hearing for some reason?

Wait, no.

(Please ignore the "Activar Windows" thing)

He actually doesn't have that good of hearing. Shit. Alright, I can still explain it.

Nico is actually the easier part. Even though Teruko and Eden were right across the gym, Nico was also extremely absorbed into the murder scheme, to the point they didn't notice the noises outside. I know that's a really bad answer, but Nico isn't in a great headspace, so it's possible they're not paying attention to anything but the gym.

In fact, it really isn't too big of a stretch to assume that no matter what, Nico absolutely thought they were alone. There are two things we know for sure:

1- The banging noise happened while Nico was in the gym.

2- After the banging noise, they just picked up a wire and inspected it. They didn't look to be in a panic or a hurry, though admittedly it's hard to tell with just one image.

Now, I don't know about you, but if I was standing in a room with a person I'm trying to murder, and there is a loud bang I know for sure someone heard, I wouldn't go inspect a bloody wire. The explanation you gave in your method is... something, I'll get there. But if you can assume that Nico would stay in the gym after the noise happened, and wouldn't even look to be in a panic despite knowing Teruko and Eden must have heard the noise; then we get to assume they didn't even realize they weren't alone in the first place. Neither explanation is great, but one of them must be true.

The real issue is wether or not Teruko and Eden would hear Nico. I'll have to defend my method specifically on this one. In my method, Nico wouldn't really make all that much noise in the clean-up section. The biggest noise in the entire method would be the right bench falling over, but we can say no one else was on the second floor until Nico started cleaning up.

The biggest noises which had a chance of being heard, then, would be moving the benches and the stool, but as long as they don't drag them too much... Well, they would absolutely have to drag the right bench, but if they drag it by the back somewhat like this:

(Wouldn't be one of my theory posts without at least one diagram)

Then hopefully it wouldn't make too much noise? And then the other bench and the stool they would mostly lift and wouldn't drag too much? It's not perfect, but these really are the only things which would really make enough noise to be noticeable.

Yes, it is a decently large assumption that Nico was silent enough not to alert Teruko and Eden. But there is one more thing to consider, and that is- well, Teruko and Eden were talking. In both the examples you showed, Ace was silent when he overheard people from another room. Teruko and Eden's conversation wouldn't have been too loud, but it may have been enough to cover some light scraping and shuffling around.

(Also, yes, I'm aware on the "Ace overhearing Arei and David" clip you can hear Arei's footsteps, but I'm pretty sure that's for dramatic effect and not actually indicative of how loud sounds from outside are for people inside the gym, and vice versa. Otherwise, the sound would need to somehow be amplified, which just makes no sense)

So... problematic? Yes. Absolutely damning? I wouldn't say so. All of our theories, both of this case and the Arei murder, make some pretty large assumptions at times, so I don't think this is enough to completely rule out my method, at least in my mind.

Little sidenote

I see what you're trying to do. You're trying to recruit more theorists to join your cause in the hopes of defeating me, huh?

Oh God, joe's onto me! Switch tactics, switch tactics!

Unimportant correction to the unimportant correction

According to Teruko, anything that was thrown in the trash from the night of DAY 2 (the time of the attempted murder on Ace) and earlier would've been disposed of by monoTV.

Uh, yeah, we're aware. That's why my original theory also included Nico taking the cloak out of the trash as they ran away, sorry if that wasn't clear enough. Not like it matters, since fridge theory reigns supreme.

The length of the wire

While I cannot guarantee that the wire we're seeing in the video is the actual proper length of it, I believe that we shouldn't doubt it too much eitheir. I think its length is as important as any other clues we found in that crime scene.

(Truth Bullet firing) I agree with that! I'm assuming you're saying this more for the venus-accirax method than my revised method, since I'm pretty sure wire length isn't too big an issue for me.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think I covered everything that caught my attention in those posts. There's probably some things I missed, but that's alright.

... Hu. That actually wasn't that bad! The biggest issue you brought up, in my opinion, was the noise. But that can be solved with a medium-large assumption. The wounds on the neck, the blood flow, and blood on hands aren't damning evidence either, though they may require small-medium assumptions to fully work. The tape, I just completely disagree with you. And the cloak and weight rack where mostly for your theory to work, so although I don't fully agree, they're not a problem for my method. Add to that the pre-existing assumptions of my method (Nico didn't get to finish their murder plan, blood wouldn't drip from the wires to the floor before Nico got to clean it up a bit, Nico hid their cloak and tape in the fridge) (I'm color-coding by severity, in case you can't tell), I don't think my theory is too unbelieveable! We're alive!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I SHALL NOW BEHOLD YOUR THEORY

(On the short list of why you believe Eden is the culprit of the Ace case)

Second, she was found in the dress-up room at nighttime, during the attempted murder on Ace. That room is close by the fitness room. To me, it seems really suspicious that Eden would be roaming in that room AT NIGHT for the sake of getting Teruko's uniforms back to Teruko's dorm. I don't believe that story one bit.

I don't have an issue with these three things you brought up, but I did want to point out, I'm pretty sure none of us believe Eden's story. I don't know what venus' and accirax's theory/theories are, but I believe Eden was putting the old clothes in the realx room for use in her later murder method. Just wanted to clarify for anyone else who may manage to follow this thread.

In the evening of DAY 2, Ace was working out in the fitness room, he's the one who moved that weight rack in such a seemingly odd position for his workout preferences.

Already explained my issues with this, but it's clear we just don't agree. Let's move on.

...Eden sneaks up on Ace and knocks him out with turpentine.

Alright, we gotta talk about this turpentine. I'm gonna bring this up in the thread for you Arei murder theory, but I'll also say it here. There is one particular moment in the class trial which makes it hard for me to believe it was Eden who stole the turpentine.

Rose: [Nico] even lied to and stole from me to commit murder. Out of everyone here, they're the least innocent.

The problem here is that Rose believes Nico lied to her to steal the turpentine. I don't know about you, but to me, this line implies Rose believes Nico only asked for that painting lesson to steal her turpentine. Now, Rose is absentminded, but she's still pretty smart when she focuses. If she believes this, it must mean she has reason to. And the only reason she would have to believe this is if the turpentine went missing during the painting session, right? Is it that much of a stretch? And keep in mind, we have no evidence Eden attended this session.

It's also important to note, Nico doesn't deny this. Their response to this is "I--! I didn't kill Arei! I swear!" They never deny lying or stealing from Rose. You could argue they're just focused on the more pressing issue, but it's still odd they don't even begin to deny it, no?

Still, this is by no means conclusive. As much as I believe these lines pretty much confirm Nico took the turpentine, or at least that it disappeared during the painting session, it's sorta up for interpretation, so your theory still stands. It's just a bit shakier in my eyes, is all.

(Skipping over some basic stuff)

First, she removed the grippy tape from the pull up bar and made a roll of tape with it.

Are we actually sure there even is enough tape on the pull-up bar to do this? That roll's pretty thick. And again, there's the issue of the spinny thing having way too much tape, which implies this roll wasn't made with just the tape already on the pull-up bar. Also, like I mentioned, it's equally impressive and utterly pointless to roll it up like this.

Anyways, I've already explained this. The roll of tape is probably different from the tape on the pull-up bar. Which gets us to the first problem I have with your theory: in my opinion, it doesn't properly explain where the tape on the pull-up bar went. There's no reason for Eden to use it on the fan when there's (presumably) a perfectly functional roll of tape next to it. If we can assume an on/off switch for the fans, we can assume a separate roll of tape next to the pull-up bar.

Next, she turned off the switch of the fans... Then, she grabbed the stepstool to reach the fan within arm's reach and stuck one end of the wire on the blade of the fan with the roll of grippy tape.

I've resigned myself to assuming there's an off switch, since it's just easier this way. However, don't think I didn't notice the issue. Not only are you being decently generous by assuming Eden can reach the fan from the stool, you didn't address one of the concerns I raised in my original post; the fact the tape on the fan is facing the ceiling.

(This again as a reminder)

Not just that, the wire itself seems to go around the blade as well. Like I said in that first post, it's extremely unlikely the fan flipped around as it fell, even with your new method, meaning the tape was always on top of the blade.

Now, this isn't an issue with our methods, since Nico didn't need the fan to spin automatically. That means they can take down the fan and put it back to work more comfortably with the tape and wire, and if they do that, it makes sense to work on the top of the blade. It would just be the easier place to reach when the fan is on the floor.

However, in your method, Eden can't do this, because she risks breaking the fan irrepairably and she does need it to spin on its own. You seem to be aware of this, which is why you made her stand on the stool to reach the fan. The problem is that, using this method, it would be infinitely easier to tape the wire to the underside of the fan blade. So unless you can explain why Eden went through the extra effort of wrapping the wire around the blade and putting the tape on top, I'm afraid your method has itself a second issue.

After that, Eden needed to move Ace's body in a proper position so that she'd be able to reach his neck with the wire. So she placed Ace's back against the wall and tried to get him to remain standing up, which would be increadibly difficult without some materials. So she placed a bench next to each side of his legs, then placed one weight plate on each foot so that his lower body would stay still. The bigger issue would be the upper body however as it would just simply bend forward without any support. That's where the next prop comes in. Eden places the broom through Ace's shirt, in his back, from top to bottom. Ace's back is up against the wall with the broom installed. That would make it practically impossible for the body to bend forward which is what the culprit needed.

I'm gonna be honest and say I can't quite picture this, but I am quite dumb. I'll take your word that this would work.

Now that the body is steady, the culprit proceeds with the next step. She wraps the wire around his neck as many times as needed. No knots needed.

Back to the neck wounds issue, another thing we just sorta see differently. I have to ask why the injuries are noticeably thinner in parts if the wire applied the same pressure all around the neck, but after that, we move on.

Once that was properly set up, she then removed the broom stuck in Ace's shirt and discarded it alongside the stepstool, the roll of tape and the two weight plates.

And here we have another major issue. How the hell did all these things end up where they ended up? Let's take a look at the crime scene again.

(Ignore the bottom part)

So, let's see. First, the benches are way too far from each other. You didn't talk too much about them, but I assume Eden just sorta moved them and toppled the right one over as she moved Ace? So why are they so far apart? Or are you saying Eden moved them for some reason?

Second issue, why are the broom and weights in the places they are? Again, it would just make more sense for Eden to leave them near the benches where she set up the mechanism, there just isn't any reason to carry them away. Not unless she wants to take them out of the room, which clearly isn't the case. There is even the question as to why she wouldn't put the weights back in the rack if she really did move them. They're not even that close to the door. Where the hell was she taking those things?

These aren't the biggest issues with your method, but they are noteworthy.

Then, Eden would move Ace's body closer to the fan, probably like right under the middle of the right fan. To make sure the body would stay still for the most part, she probably made a few minor adjustments with the wire, maybe she made Ace sit down on one of the benches, who knows?

How is he positioned? I can't envision any way this works, but maybe I'm just dumb. This isn't something you can just handwave away, mind you. You have to answer carefully, because his bleeding possibly depends on this. And don't say bench, because which bench? They're both either too far or too fallen over to the right to work here-

Wait, why the hell did she take him to the wall then? If she was just going to put him back under the fan, wouldn't it make more sense to set up the murder under the fan in the first place? And that's an important question to answer, too, because otherwise there really is no explanation for the benches. I'm confused.

With this, the murder mechanism was complete. The only thing left to do is to probably clean up the crime scene and possibly get rid of a few evidence. Then once that's done, she would turn the switch of the fan back on and let the mechanism do the dirty work for her while she's away from the gym.

Wait, what evidence is she getting rid off? I got lost.

...she quickly turns on the fan and exits the fitness room to proceed to hide in the dress up room before someone shows up and she gets caught red handed. Then it's at this time that Nico has entered the second floor! They're different from the usual however. They're not wearing their cloak! The reason why is because of their incentive to murder Ace, which probably turned them into a different person, like some kind of monster looking for their desired bloodlust. Could be represented by their missing cloak, who knows?

... Alright, they're not wearing their cloak. I'll ignore the exact reason you gave.

One question, though. Why is Nico looking for Ace now? As in, after nighttime begins. Your method has Nico entering the second floor just a few seconds/minutes before Teruko, but by the time she goes there, it's already nighttime. Wouldn't Nico assume Ace would be in bed at around the time nighttime begins?

Actually, maybe that's not too big of an issue. Nico isn't thinking straight, we can assume some illogical actions. The rest of what you said about Eden's perspective is fine, since it's just sorta what happened in the episode. Now to Nico's POV.

Nico turned off the switch so that they could get the finishing blow themselves by turning the switch back on.

This seems... odd. Keep in mind, whatever Nico is doing, they're apparently not thinking of the class trial.

Veronika: Is this what you were envisioning when you tried to kill Ace? That the trial would happen like this, but with Ace instead of Arei dead?

Nico: I didn't... I never thought about it... I...

So they didn't want the "last blow" to be the blackened. They must have wanted it because they were angry at Ace, right? But then, why would they be satisfied by turning a fan off and on? Surely they would want something more violent, to really take out their frustration?

Eh, this is a nitpick. Nico's headstate is probably all over the place, so their actions don't have to make that much sense.

(After hearing the girls)

They eitheir wanted to wait for the girls to go back to the first floor just in case that their murder attempt would create noises and get their attention OR they wanted to wait for the girls to go back to the first floor so that they could turn back on the switch and abuse the BDA rule.

The second option is impossible because again, Nico no think of trial. But the first one is acceptable, so this isn't an issue. Eden wanting to abuse the BDA rule is a good possibility, though, and frankly better than any explanation I can give to why Nico set up the mechanism in my method, so.

....heh! heheheh! hehehehehehHEHE! HEHEHEHEHEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

O... kay... joe's lost it. They've gone Literature Girl Insane, I guess. Happens.

Ace is the person responsible for getting blood on his fingers. He touched the bloody wires with those fingers. Yes! In that moment! Ace was awake and concious.

Okay, so first, I have to say, you also surpassed my expectations. I really didn't think you'd be able to solve the "Ace thinks Nico was the culprit" issue, yet here you are, giving a perfectly reasonable explanation to it. Ace waking up is a great concept for your theory, it even explains the blood on the fingers better than any of the other methods in the thread!

... But there's a problem. You know me well enough to know what my issue with this is about to be. Pop quiz! Is it:

A- The blood on the wires!

B- The blood on the wires!

C- The- you get the idea.

Yeah, it's the blood on the wires again. This is your explanation for it, isn't it? That Ace wiped it off with his hand when he grabbed the wire? Well, that's impossible.

The first issue is simple. Even if the blood had only been there for less than a few minutes, it would be impossible to completely wipe off. Have you ever killed a mosquito by crushing it into a wall or another surface, and the mosquito had so much blood in its body that it stained the surface with blood? Well, if you have, answer me this. Were you able to completely wipe the blood off whatever surface got stained? In my experience, it doesn't work. Even if you wipe off a bit, there would be a noticeable stain left behind. And that mosquito clean up attempt would happen much earlier, with much fresher blood than what Ace did according to you. The problem here is that the lone wire has parts which are completely clean. Not rubbed off or anything, completely clean. Unless Ace had bleach in his gloves or something, there's no way he would be able to accidentally and completely wipe off that blood.

Not convinced? Well, let's take a closer look.

(I'm using the "estimate" image so you can understand the problem better)

Alright, let's see.

-First, what happened with the clean part on the left side of the lone wire? It's way too long to have been wiped off. Was it never in contact with Ace's neck in the first place, just hanging off to the side? Fine, we can go with that, even if I don't understand why Eden wouldn't use the entire wire.

-Second, and this is the most important part to understand, is that separated bit of blood on the right of the lone wire. You know, that part I've always used a noose to explain? That's important because we can use that to estimate where Ace's hand was according to your method.

Essentially, assuming Ace can magically wipe off the blood, his hand would need to be in the "skip" between the middle and the right sections of blood, right? And then the blood on the right is the section of the wire he wasn't grabbing, the part which went around his neck, then back again so Ace could clean the end, yeah?

There's an issue with that. If you think about it, that would mean the "skip" in the blood and the clean portion at the end would be the same length, since they were grabbed by the same hand.

If you look at the picture of the wire again, the "skip" is at least twice the size of the clean portion at the end. And because you consider this system to have only been made up of one wire, if this really happened, you would expect the end of the fan-wire to be clean, too, so the clean portion matches the other "skip". However, that end of the wire is still fully covered in blood. So, I ask, how is it possible for Ace to clean off the blood like this?

And don't tell me this is just the difference between his palm and his fingers. Ace would need to have been grabbing hard to even get the chance of wiping off the blood, so all of his fingers expect maybe his thumb would have been grabbing on the wire. And I don't know about you, but my palm isn't more than twice the size the horizontal length of my fingers, and that doesn't seem to be the case for Ace either.

The other possibility is that the end of the lone wire was wiped off by Ace's other hand, but 1- there's no evidence that one was bloody, and 2- the length doesn't become any less of an issue, since both hands are the same size.

-And then, possibly the biggest problem, the long portion in the middle of the wire which is absolutely filled with blood. The problem here is that the wire must have been wrapped around Ace's neck several times, yet somehow his hand didn't wipe it off.

If Ace only used his right hand to wipe off the blood, the wire needs to fully wrap around before meeting back with his hand, right? Ignoring hand-neck proportions, at the very least this would mean the wire would need to wrap around Ace's neck four to five or even six times, and one or two more for the end of the fan-wire. Yet somehow, only one of the "loops" was wiped off?

Do you see how absolutely impossible this is with only Ace's right hand? There's just no real way of positioning the hand to work. The only way to remotely get close is by making the "skip" the lowest "loop" on the neck, and making Ace only grab it. But then we have to ask why Ace only grabbed the lowest loop of the wire instead of grabbing all of it. And even then, the problems of the different length between the "skip" and the clean end wouldn't disappear.

But what if we add the other hand? Well, I'm not making another graph, but it's more of the same. The middle section still needs to wrap around several times, and Ace has no reason to grab the lowest "loop", which is the only way to prevent the blood on the middle from being wiped off.

I'm not kidding when I say the blood on the wires is by far the biggest issue in this case. I wish it was as easy to explain as "just wipe off the blood lol". But not only is the concept flawed in premise, the exact pattern the blood makes still doesn't work in the slightest.

Ace used his hands to break free from the wire stuck to his neck. He also pulled with all his might and body. He would be most likely tough and strong enough to do this. Upon doing so, it would rip out the fan from the ceiling and it would also split the wire in two. Because he was pulling, he was also going backwards. So by the time the mechanism broke down, he kinda flew to the wall, probably hitting his head to the wall as well. That would give the sitting down position that we saw in the crime scene.

I'm... not confident this would work, frankly.

I may be misinterpreting something here, because I can't tell exactly what you're envisioning. I think what you're saying is that Ace would, like, pull and run backwards on the wire to break it, and he did so with so much force, he broke the wire and fell backwards, right? Something like this?

I'm bad at perspective and scale, but I did my best here. I think this is the best setup to get as close to the crime scene as possible, but again, correct me if I'm misinterpreting something.

You may notice I drew the blade with the wire as far from the wall as possible. If the wire isn't pretty much directly opposite to the direction Ace ran, the fan would spin as he pulls on the wire. And the problem with that is that, according to your method, if the blade with the wire is closest to the wall, Ace can stand next to the wall without the wire breaking, because Eden set up the wire like that.

But the main reason this is the most generous way I have of picturing this, is the way the fan falls. The fan-wire blade is pointing to the left (door view), which means whatever Ace does here, it has to end with the fan-wire pointing that way. You can't just put the wire there originally, because you run into the issue of the fan spinning as Ace pulls, so the best way I can explain it is by placing the fan-wire directly opposite to the direction where Ace would pull, and hoping the fan would spin a bit in mid-air after breaking from an initial exertion of force.

(I really hope I'm explaining this well enough)

This... doesn't seem perfect, frankly, but I just can't think of any other way to explain the final position of the fan-wire-

Wait, isn't that a problem with my method as well?

...

Actually, it sort of isn't, but I need to clarify something.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interlude: Clarification on my method

So, the final stage of Nico's plan in my method is after they stop spinning the fan manually. I originally represented it like this.

After this, I said that the lone wire would actually be attached to the "jungle gym", not the weight rack. So that's change number one. However, I also changed the way Nico would move the weights. They would move them towards the weight rack.

However, what I failed to realize and mention is that, no matter how carefully Nico pulls on the weights, the fan-wire would pull the blades along, which ends up looking like this.

... Which, yeah, isn't great, but it would happen. The main issue now is that the lone wire would probably slack once this happens, and so it would stop cutting rather quickly.

However, this isn't a (big) problem. Remember than in this method, Nico's plan failed, and it's possible this is the reason why. If they move somewhat quickly and in the right way, they would still be able to cut Ace's neck as they pull the weights closer to their destination, enough to fill out all the blood in the middle of the lone wire. Hopefully?

Anyways, they would try that until they realize they can't stop the fan from spinning, which would screw with whatever system they were trying to set up. That's when they begin clean-up, which would be the same as before.

What's the important thing about this clarification, since I didn't really change the method almost at all? Well, it means by the time Nico gives up on their method, the fan-wire would be pointing the right way. It also aligns with where the stool is, which works with my clean-up method. Then, when Nico pulls on the weights to bring down the fan the way I described in my original theory, the fan-wire would probably be pulled straight down, so it would stay with roughly the same orientation.

Is this perfect? No, there's a chance this doesn't actually perfectly work. But it gets close enough I'm willing to assume a small margin of error here.

Interlude over

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Alright, back to your method.

Where were we? Oh, yeah. I was explaining why this is the best way to set up your idea I can come up with. Again, correct me if I'm wrong.

So, here comes the problem. First, the fan spinning in the air is the best I can come up with, but that doesn't mean it's good. The main thing I'm worried about is the blade on the back, on top of the fallen bench. The fan would need to spin clockwise for it to work, right? Counterclockwise would need too much speed, I feel. But if it spins clockwise, it would need to fall and stop spinning practically instantly, since the blade is right up against the foot of the bench. Am I making sense? This is really hard to explain.

But more importantly, I can't figure out how Ace ends up like that, without staining the wall further up. No matter how many times I change the angle in my head and imagine Ace ragdolling against the wall, I can only picture him either slamming his neck much higher up, closer to the pull-up bar; or hitting the wall with too much of an angle and falling on his side, not sitting. Maybe this is just a me issue, but I just can't figure out what's going on here.

The final issue, and perhaps the most important one, is the position of the lone wire. Even if the wire snaps, how the hell does it end up there? The wire was supposed to be wrapped around his neck several times, so if it was broken in only one strong pull, the lone wire would move with Ace's neck, probably ending up around where Ace is, if not even still around his neck. I know I've played fast and loose with wire physics in my own method, but this feels a bit more significant than any weirdness in the other theories. And it's not like Nico could have moved it, because it wouldn't make sense for them to. Go up to Ace, grab the wire, come back to next to the weight rack, and inspect the wire with their back to the door? Yeah, no.

Again, if I misinterpreted something, please tell me. I couldn't fully understand this part of your method.

(Everything about Ace possibly having blood on his palms)

Sure! Not anywhere near as outrageous as some of the stuff I assumed for my method.

(Everything about Ace pretending to be dead)

I'm... not sure this makes sense, since Ace wants to go fight Nico straight after the "I'm not fucking dead!" moment, so you'd imagine he wouldn't wait to go do that if he was awake. But you know what? Nico acts weird enough in the other methods that I'm comfortable calling it even here.

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So, there it is! Peer review of your new theory complete! There are too many oddities, too much unexplained evidence, and a few too many assumptions for me to believe it, unfortunately. Still, it's a really good and creative theory! And I always love cases where multiple people are doing different things which end up interacting in the case.

I remained unconvinced, and still think my methods explains everything a bit better. But of course, I'm always open to more discussion! Take care!

Trying to figure out the Ace "murder" method

Hey, it's me again!

Seeing the great reception to my Arei murder theory (which, in case you missed, has an important second version (adult warning for Arei's BDA) and a less important third post, and beyond), I decided to try and figure out a method for the Ace murder attempt from episode 6. That and I have a sorta friendly theory rivalry going on with thebadjoe-

Seems like a fun challenge. Let's get into it!

Truth Bullets

Before the murder:

After:

1- Ace's body and wounds: Ace's body is sitting against a wall, slumped over. His neck has what seem to be three slice-type wounds across the front. These are the only visible wounds we know of. His face is angry, but this being Ace, it'd be weirder if it wasn't.

2- Bloodstain on the wall: There is a faint bloodstain just behind Ace's neck. Notably, this is the only trace of blood outside of Ace and the wires.

3- Lone wire: Because I clearly didn't have enough thinking about ropes and pulleys in the other murder, this one involves a wire! That's practically just a sharp rope! Notably, there is blood around a huge chunk of the middle of the cable, and a bit on one of the sides.

4- Wire taped to the fan: There is another piece of wire, wrapped around and taped to the broken ceiling fan. There is blood on the end of the wire not connected to the fan. The roll of tape used is right there. Fun fact, the tape actually dissappears from the background in the middle of the investigation, as pointed out by thebadjoe. Eden took it. This has more to do with the other murder than this one, but it's something to consider.

5- Broken fan: The fan on the right (door view) is broken, and on the ground.

6- Moved benches: Two benches have been moved from their original position. The one on the left is just moved to the side, while the one on the right is toppled over next to Ace. Notably, it's under the broken fan, meaning it must have toppled over before the fan got there.

7- Stool: There is a stool.

I have genuinely no idea where the hell this thing came from. It wasn't in any of the second floor rooms, or any of the first floor rooms we've seen. Was it in storage?

??????????????????

Hey, how fucking far did they drag this thing?! I have to imagine it was somewhere else, as there are actually a few doors which have never been opened, such as in the laundry room.

Whatever, no one cares. There's a stool, let's live with that.

8- Broom: There is a broom. I really hope they didn't get this from storage as well.

9- Toppled over weight rack: The weight rack has been moved closer to the... lifting bench thing, and now lay sprawled across the floor. Yeah, I got no idea about gym terminology.

10- Isolated weights: There are two small weights off to the side. Yep, they sure do exist.

11- Non-functioning fan: The fan on the left isn't moving (I know you can't tell from the picture, but trust me on this). This is especially strange, as we see the same fan moving the next day when Teruko and Rose go to the gym, despite the other fan still being gone.

12- Clean pull-up bar: The tape which was around the pull-up bar since the first day the second floor opened has disappeared.

13?- ???: So, uh, I got no idea what's going on in this general area. Apart from the bench press bar apparently disappearing, there seems to be a whole ass chunk of a mirror missing, which makes absolutely zero sense. It almost looks like someone took a bite off the damn thing, but I don't think anyone here eats glass, not even MonoTV. I imagine this is an animation error, but I'll point it out anyways in case it's somehow important.

14- Rose's account: During her painting session with Nico, her turpentine went missing.

15- Teruko's account: "[Ace] stayed unconcious for much longer than can be explained by blood loss or asphyxiation." Teruko believes this means Ace was likely knocked out with Rose's turpentine. Now, why she believes this when turpentine inhalation cannot cause unconciousness, only vomiting and nausea at worst, is beyond me. But since no one ever corrects her, I believe turpentine just... works differently in the DRDT universe.

16- Banging noise: Shortly before Eden and Teruko entered the crime scene, they heard a strange banging noise which came from the gym, followed by a clattering sound. This noise is... definitely strange, and in fact, I struggle to say what exactly it was. Since it doesn't match anything perfectly, I guess it must either be the weight rack toppling, or the fan falling. Also, this noise must have been caused by Nico, as no one else ran out of the gym afterwards.

17- Nico's missing cloak: Nico's usual cloak (that's what it's called, right?) is nowhere to be seen. Where the hell it went is a fantastic question, but the fact they don't have it in the first place could mean a lot of different things. Also to note, Nico doesn't have any blood on them.

I believe that about covers it. Let's see what we can manage. Also, I apologize in advance if it seems like this isn't very structured, I'm doing the best to explain my reasoning step by step.

What was Nico doing?

This may seem like an odd question to start with, but it's actually one which gives way to one of the most fundamental truths of the crime. One which I need to establish before getting anywhere in terms of theorizing. No, I'm not about to claim Nico didn't try to murder Ace, It's something else.

The answer seems obvious at first: they were clearly killing Ace, right? Well, not so fast. Nico was standing quite far from the body, yet holding a wire covered in blood. It almost looks like they just stumbled into an already established crime scene and were just investigating. Some claim this means Nico wasn't the one who set up most of the crime, but we have to remember this line:

Charles: But did you not intentionally try to make a serious attempt on Ace's life? Answer honestly.

Nico: Y... Yes...

Nico admits to, at some point, having tried to kill Ace. Of course, this isn't conclusive, but there is actually something else which makes me believe Nico might be the sole culprit of this almost-murder. A piece of evidence I haven't seen anyone mention in detail before.

The isolated weights.

What's the issue with this weights? Well, there are three truths which make them particularly strange.

1- The fact they're isolated means they were likely involved in the murder method.

2- They are decently far from any other piece of evidence.

3- They are neatly stacked on top of each other.

The fact they're neatly stacked means someone put them like that intentionally, yet they were clearly involved in the murder method. However, if they were involved in the method, how are they this far from everything else?

Well, let me answer those questions by raising others in return. Why is Ace so far from the wires, and why was Nico holding one of them? Why are the weights the only thing in the room which seem to be placed intentionally, when everything else is all over the place? When did Nico lose their cloak? What did they do to make that banging noise?

All these questions lead me to one answer. Nico wasn't actively trying to murder Ace when Eden and Teruko entered the scene, they were cleaning the crime scene. This could include moving Ace's body around, screwing around with the wires in a way which broke the fan, and, the important part, instinctively stacking the weights on top of each other. Maybe because Nico was getting bothered by the general mess of the room, or something like that (I know I would try to put some order in the room if I was nervous), and the weights were the easiest things to move around.

Whatever the reason Nico had for moving the weights, the point is, they did. This movement clearly didn't have anything to do with the actual method, as again, the weights were pretty far from everything, so it seems to me like they were just sorta "cleaning". And the reason everything else is in disarray is because they weren't done when Teruko and Eden got there.

Of course, you may be unconvinced. You may have questions like "why didn't Nico check Ace was dead dead?". But I promise, this will all make more sense as I explain further, so for now, let's assume Nico was cleaning the crime scene.

What does that mean? It means the position of most of the objects in the room could have changed between the time the attack was carried out, and the moment Teruko and Eden entered the gym.

With this possibility in mind, let's take a deeper dive into some of the evidence.

Two Wires on a Bird

(Wait, that's not how the song-)

Now, as you may remember, there were two pieces of wire in the gym; one by itself, and one taped to the fan. A lot of people assume these two were pieces of the same wire, which was broken when the fan went down, probably.

However, I do not believe this is the case. Remember, these wires are metal. From what I could find, their black color could imply they may be aluminum or iron, for example. These have, scientifically speaking, a fuckton of tensile strength. You would need a force of no less than an elephant stampede to break that with tension alone. They can be broken, quite easily with enough effort and tools, but not easily snapped.

No, I believe the answer is much simpler. There were always two wires; there was never an unintentional breakage. If these two things were ever one solid piece of wire, the would-be-murderer must have separated them before they set up their scheme, with whatever they could find. Maybe there could be tools in storage? Not too important.

But, beyond stealing the turpentine, is there really any evidence the killer really thought the method through with that much anticipation? After all, there is this line:

Veronika: Is this what you were envisioning when you tried to kill Ace? That the trial would happen like this, but with Ace instead of Arei dead?

Nico: I didn't... I never thought about it... I...

If Nico is the sole culprit as I'm claiming, doesn't that line mean there wasn't much forethought on Nico's part?

Don't worry, I'll explain that line later. For now, let me show you that the almost-killer absolutely planned the method in advance.

Broken Fans, Broken Hearts

One of the evidence pieces which confused me the most at first was, without a doubt, the non-functioning fan on the left. Why the hell isn't it moving? It's not the other fan falling, as we see the fan on the left working independantly the next day. Clearly, something happened which broke this fan, and it may have broken the other one as well.

Now, I looked through Google to see how ceiling fans work, see if I can figure something funky out. As a quick and oversimplified explanation, they run a current to create magnetic force which moves a rotor which moves the blades. From this, I thought of maybe using magnets to screw them up, but there aren't any magnets we know of in DRDT. I looked into Nico's laser pointer, but that also went nowhere. Despite the lack of evidence of its use, J's remote was the only thing I could think of for a while.

That is, until I realized one fundamental truth:

I'm an idiot.

The answer is much, much simpler. And it comes from one important question. Why is the tape on the fan facing the ceiling?

Most people, myself included, see a stool, tape, and tape on a fan, and assume the killer used the stool to reach the fan and put the tape there. But the problem is, that would only allow you to place the wire on the underside of the blades. And I'm pretty sure the fan wouldn't do a cartwheel in midair to land upside down.

No, what the tape's position implies is that the killer had access to the upper side of the fan's blades. This means they were likely able to bring the fans down before the murder, and put them back later. However, it's very likely they wouldn't be completely able to fix them, explaining why the left one isn't moving.

I'm not sure how they'd do that, and it sorta relies again on tools from storage, but it doesn't quite matter. There's no point in taping a wire to a fan unless you want it on the fan, aka close to the ceiling, so the killer must have put them back. They likely did this way before the murder, though that raises the question of why the tape would still be there in that case. I do have an explanation, but it'll have to wait for now.

The fact the killer had this ability to take down and somewhat fix the fans makes the left fan's state trivial. They would just take it down to break it, like they did the fan on the right. Of course, the question is why.

I have two answers. The boring one is that the almost-killer thought having one fan moving while the other was broken would be suspicious, and would make Ace more cautious than just seeing both fans broken.

The more fun answer, but one I don't think makes much sense, is that breaking the fans could make the turpentine more effective. Keep in mind Teruko says it is inhaling the fumes from turpentine which can cause unconciousness, and the fans, moving the air around and stuff, would make it harder for the fumes to really be effective... somehow? Again, impossible to know from real life turpentine, as it doesn't work the same as in DRDT. There are a decent bit of inconsistencies with this answer, but eh. As long as Nico could conceivably believe it would help, they may do it. The killers don't have to always know exactly what they're doing.

Alright, Murder Time!

Now that you know how my brain interprets most of the evidence in the crime scene, it's time to get to the actual method. Just so you can get a taste of the insanity required to come up with something which is at least even slightly believeable, here's a highlight reel of the silliest ideas I seriously considered at one point or another!

-Using the broom to beat the shit out of a fan like a piñata.

-Putting the fan on the treadmill and making it run. Don't ask me how this would work.

-Creating a yoyo with the wire and the isolated weights. I almost wanted this one to be true.

-Creating a weird garrote thing with the wires and the weights.

Alright, got it out of my system. Let's actually start now.

The first thing we have to look at is the blood on the wires.

This is, hands down, the part of the crime which drove me the most insane. We need to somehow figure out a way to have blood on quite a bit of the end of the fan-wire, a huge chunk in the middle of the lone wire, and a bit on its right side as well. All of this, while only leaving injuries on the front of Ace's neck, and not the back.

The simplest way to do this would be to "drag" the bloody parts of the wire across Ace's neck, but the question is how to "dodge" the parts which aren't bloody. If you try to think about this for yourself, you're gonna notice this is a lot harder than it seems. The bloody part on the middle of the lone wire is long, but the one on the right is small. Additionally, you have to somehow figure out a way to bloody up the end of the fan-wire, which comes with the problem of "where the hell even is Ace to have his neck cut by this thing".

The first thing I figured out is that the end of the fan-wire was likely attached to the middle of the lone wire, the latter doubled over the point of contact.

(My art is back with a vengeance)

The lone wire could have even been tied around itself to triple over itself, if the length was still too long for the killer's taste. This would also help to explain the multiple injuries on his neck.

However, the problem with this is that goddamn little bit of blood on the right of the lone wire. It can't be solved by just dragging Ace a bit further, as there's a part of the wire which isn't bloody. This took me a while to figure out. In fact, at one point I was close to calling it quits, and just leaving that bit of blood unexplained.

But then, it came to me. A noose!

If the killer made a noose with the wire (let's assume that's possible), and Ace was dragged along the base of the noose, but not the noose itself, then the point of connection would leave a bloody part of the wire which would appear separated from the rest once you extended it out.

(The main takeaway from this "drawing" is the noose, don't worry if you don't exactly understand the triple over thing. After all, I'm not even sure it was actually used)

Of course, now we have to ask ourselves why in the hell is the killer making a noose, then having Ace's neck drag across the base of the noose. The first thing which comes to mind is putting the noose around something, something like the pull up bar. That's sorta the only object near the fan I could see this working with. And we know the other end of the wire must have been on the fan.

This all points me to a theory I was already cooking up beforehand. The killer may have used gravity as a weapon, letting Ace's body lean on the wire as it tenses and untenses to slowly slash at his neck. This is sorta the system I'm envisioning.

Obviously the drawings aren't to scale.

Now, if we miraculously (and it really would be a miracle) get this to work, it could explain those damn bloodstains that stumped me for hours. It could also explain the meaning of those isolated plates: if you manage to secure them to Ace's chest, they would weigh him down in such a way that his neck would press harder on the wire, causing more damage. I'll get to the way I believe it's possible the killer secured them later, but for now, this is the gist of my idea.

Now, there are a significant amount of questions and concerns you may raise just by seeing this, so let me address those.

The first concern you may have is the length of the wire system. Keeping in mind the fan-wire is atteched to the end of the blade, it would practically be impossible for this system to work if the fan spins all the way.

For the fan to actually spin automatically and not break anything, the "fan-out" position must exist only when the blade with the wire is as far away from the pull-up bar as possible. With how large the fan is, the end of the wire would be somewhat over the treadmills, maybe a bit closer to the door. The problem is, as the fan spins and the wire "tries to slack" (remember, Ace's neck pressing against it would mean it never fully slacks), it would end up practically touching the floor by the time the blade gets closer to the pull-up bar. Not to mention the issue of Ace's weight possibly fucking with the fan's automatic spin. In other words, it's impossible to create this system if the fan is spinning on its own.

...The sharper of you will have already realized why that argument doesn't work. It's not a problem, because the fan isn't spinning on its own. We established it earlier, remember? The fan was likely broken before the murder attempt even formerly began. That means the fan is spinning manually.

Perhaps that piñata idea wasn't so far off after all, we just needed a gentler touch. Using the broom and probably the stool, the almost-killer would be able to make the fan move on their whim. And this means there's no reason for them to make the fan do full revolutions. If they just move the blades back and forth a little bit, they would be able to "straighten" and "slack" the wire system however they wanted, and wouldn't need the system to extend all the way to the other side of the room. In fact, they would actually want the system to be as short as possible while still reaching from the fan to the pull-up bar, since that simplifies the positioning of Ace's body, as you'll see later.

But before we get to that, I have to answer something else. This method, you may have noticed, wouldn't exactly leave the deepest wounds, would it? I mean, it could definitively cause bleeding, but the wounds would likely be quite shallow, unless the wire is ultra sharp. It seems like a pretty bad murder system if it only leaves mostly superficial wounds.

Except, who told you the wounds weren't superficial? Remember, Ace didn't actually die from this. And although I'm no expert in anatomy, I believe any neck wound would be fatal if it's deep enough. Thus, whatever the method used was, it could only leave shallow wounds.

That still raises the question of why the killer would do this, but I'll get there. For now, let me give you a sneak peek: I believe the attacker knew Ace didn't die from the wire attack. Intriguing, right?

And if you're worried about the amount of blood being too much for shallow wounds, don't worry. As I said, I believe Teruko and Eden ran into the crime scene a while after the crime actually happened, so Ace must have been bleeding for a while. And I'm no forensic expert, but I believe people who are alive bleed faster than corpses, since the heart is still beating and all that. Essentially, there's a lot of blood only because Ace has been bleeding for a while.

Now comes the hardest part of the visualization, and frankly, the one thing which really makes me doubt whether or not this is possible. With the two benches found on the crime scene, you have to play jenga with them and Ace's body in a way which makes sure his head reaches the pull-up bar in the "fan-out" position, and which doesn't run into issues holding his body up in the "fan-in" position. Considering the height of the pull-up bar, I think the best way to do this would be placing the benches parallel to the wire, and Ace's body kneeling perpendicular to it. You might also want to put a space in between the benches for the knees to bend forward, but I'm not sure.

(Not to scale)

Again, I know this is hard to visualize, and probably harder to pull off, but I don't think it's completely impossible. If anyone has better ideas on how to put the benches, I'd love to hear it.

Now, the sharper of you would realize a problem. As Ace's body flops onto the wire, it's likely going to get pulled forward, but it would also likely slide down towards Ace's chest. That's a problem, since his wounds are only on his neck. However, I have a possible solution for this. You know how I said you could secure the isolated weight plates on Ace's chest to make him press harder onto the wire? Well, if you secure them high and well enough, with tape for example, they might be able to stop the wires from sliding down.

The unfortunate part of this is that we can't be sure if there was any blood on the weights, which there likely would be in this case, since Teruko didn't check them closely. But the bigger issue here is the tape itself: where'd it go?

Well, I'll answer that question with another question. How is there no blood on the floor? Under this method, gravity would make at least a fair bit of blood fall to the floor. There's no way Nico cleaned it up, so how?

Well, if you don't want a liquid to stain a floor, what can you do? You can drape something over the floor so that gets stained instead of the floor. And this is how I plan to explain Nico's missing cloak. Their cloak was draped over the floor in the place where the blood would fall, as to avoid staining the floor with blood. Nico later removed the cloak from the crime scene, possibly leaving it in the dress-up room or somewhere else for the time being.

Now, that sounds ridiculous. Why would Nico leave the crime scene so early? Is there any actual evidence they left at some point?

Well, actually, there is. It's the other place where blood should have been in this method. Since Ace's neck must reach the base of the noose, it would touch the pull-up bar and stain it with blood. Or rather, it would stain the tape on the pull-up bar with blood. The tape which is also missing.

Before.

After.

In fact, this missing piece of tape is extremely important evidence for my theory. The fact it's missing means the pull-up bar was involved, possibly being stained with blood. It also means the culprit took evidence out of the crime scene, which helps explain why Nico is missing their cloak. It also gives credence to the theory the killer taped the isolated weights to Ace's chest, since one missing piece of tape could imply two missing pieces of tape. And- hey! That's why the roll of duct tape is still there! They didn't need it for the fan, since that set up was likely done before the murder attempt as established earlier, so they must have used it somewhere else!

Oh yeah, it's all coming together.

And with this, as you've noticed, we've sorta already arrived at my conclusion on the culprit. Since I believe Nico's cloak was involved in the setup, but was later removed, I firmly assert Nico is the sole almost-murderer. After all, even if the killer knocked out Nico and put them in the crime scene or something, there would be no reason to discard their cloak, and if Nico took it out the gym after waking up, there's no reason to return until they tell someone else about the body.

At this point, I should also address the hidden quote I know is gonna be brought up. Like with every character, if you inspect element on Nico's page you get a hidden quote, which in their case is "why should I own up for the mistakes someone else made?". That makes it sound like they didn't do this, but keep in mind, Nico did confirm having attempted to kill Ace, so I don't think it makes sense for the mistake to be "tried to kill Ace". I actually think this line could be a lot darker. I think this line could imply Ace made the mistakes being referred to, and Nico feels as though they don't have to own up for that. Like, "Ace was the one who fucked around, I just made them find out". Though I am admittedly biased towards evil Nico interpretations, so I can't be sure. Also, this could be about something from another chapter entirely.

Now that we sort of have an idea of how the attack could have gone down, we have to start thinking of the clean up. Unfortunately, this part of the plan wouldn't leave many clues behind, so it's largely speculative. Also worth keeping in mind, I believe this started a while before Teruko and Eden even arrived at the second floor.

The first order of business is taking Ace's body out of the mechanism. They would need to gently let it lean on the wire until the fan wouldn't turn anymore, before quickly stepping off the stool and going over. I'll explain why they're so worried about the body later, but for now, trust me bro. They would push the body off the wire, moving the benches to maneuver better, but their movements are sort of sloppy. This results in the rightmost bench falling over, and when they push Ace up against the wall, they do so haphazardly, leaving behind a small blood stain behind his neck. This is unfortunately the only explanation I have for the bloodstain on the wall which still fits all the other evidence. I say unfortunately because it's a sorta odd explanation for something I would usually consider quite important, but I've had enough trying to explain the blood on the wires, I'm not gonna worry too much about this little thing.

After making sure the body is off the wire, Nico would want to take care of the most incriminating evidence first: their bloodstained cloak. They would probably roll it up into a ball to carry it, though I imagine they may wipe some of the blood off the wires as well. After all, it's the one piece of evidence which can be directly be linked back to them. Since they just took the body down, they would also pick up the evidence closest to them; the bloodstained tape on the pull-up bar and the tape and weights on Ace's chest. They decide to leave the weights in the gym for the time being, and carry out the cloak and the pieces of tape, likely leaving them somewhere else on the second floor. I think one of the changing rooms in the dress-up room is the likeliest spot, or the trash can. They were later planning on disposing of it in a better way, I imagine, but I don't think they wanted to leave the body alone too long, since as I said, they may have known Ace was alive.

Timeline-wise, it's hard to say how much time passes between Nico going out and into the gym, and the moment Teruko and Eden meet in the dress-up room. Especially because part of my other theory is that Eden was actually doing some stuff on the second floor at this time. So here's how I see it; when they return to the gym, they put the weights they had just sort of left there one on top of the other, probably move the stool a little, but most importantly, they start trying to figure out a way to take down the wire system. They initially try things like untying the noose or undoing the knot in the middle, but they're worried about blood getting on them or getting cut by the wire. This hesitation on how to take the wire system down is what explains the time difference between the start of their cleaning and the moment Eden and Teruko get there. I am deeply aware this isn't a very satisfying answer to that issue, but I don't think it's too outlandish, especially since Nico is clearly not in the greatest mental state.

Eventually, they decide they're not going to take the wire system down carefully. To avoid getting blood on themselves, the best way would be to rip out the entire system all at once. I imagine they looped the wire around the broom, and pulled hard in one direction. Do it well enough, and I believe both the noose and the knot between the wires would come undone. However, in doing this, Nico also accidentally knocked down the ceiling fan. This causes the banging noise Eden and Teruko hear.

However, Nico doesn't think anyone else is nearby, and thus doesn't worry about the noise. They just pick up the lone wire (by the parts which aren't bloody), which had flown towards them thanks to their broom trick, and stretch it out... because they felt like it. Yeah, I'm not really sure. But I know a lot of people do weird things to calm themselves when nervous, and Nico is not thinking straight. Fixing up the wire could be something they felt compelled to do without logical reason. I hope this makes sense to you as much as it makes sense to me. Regardless, this is what Teruko and Eden catch them doing. Nico runs away, and probably picks up their cloak on the way as to at least have the slightest argument for their innocence. Since the lone pieces of tape are there, Nico probably picks them up too.

That's basically it for what happened, though you may have noticed there is one piece of evidence I never mentioned. That being the toppled over weight rack. However, there's a pretty simple explanation for this, one I have to give credit to thebadjoe for. Essentially, it's possible the weight rack was moved by Ace to train. If he was bench pressing, it would make sense for him to bring the weight rack closer to the... bench press bench? You know what I mean. And then, when the killer attacked them with turpentine, the rack was toppled over in the struggle. There's unfortunately no way to confirm this, as in the ep 11 flashback, Ace is in the gym but the weight rack is not next to the bench press bench. This doesn't disprove anything; Ace could have just been doing literally anything else. But it unfortunately doesn't confirm anything either.

So, there we go! A series of events which more or less explains all the major evidence in the scene and is (hopefully) physically possible! The bloodstains on the wires were a major pain, to the point I will gladly take anything that explains them more or less satisfactorily, and the missing tape on the pull up bar convinces me I'm (hopefully) in the right track.

... Yeah, so there's still a problem.

Hey, OP, what the fuck?

So, once again my "method before motive" way of theorizing arrives at an extremely complicated system which seems to have no purpose at all. If the fan really is broken as I claim, then there's no way for this to be a remote murder, and a lot of this is just unnecessary. Like, why not just cut Ace's neck with the wires using your hands, the way God (MonoTV) intended? And what the hell did I mean when I said Nico started cleaning the crime scene despite knowing Ace was alive?!

So, here comes the most speculative part of my theory. The reason for the method. Initially, one would assume a system like this would be used to get away with the murder without being caught, like most murders in... well, murder mystery stories. However, remember that line I brought up before? The one where Veronika asks about the trial, and Nico claims to have never thought about it?

I think they're telling the truth. I don't think the purpose of the system is to get away with the murder at all.

And it all comes back to the concern I raised about superficial wounds. Like I said, this system seems odd because it wouldn't be able to cause anything but some shallow cuts. But, what if that's the point?

What if Nico designed this method specifically so it wouldn't kill Ace?

That sounds insane, but think about it. If Nico tries to cut Ace's neck with the wires just by using their hands, it's possible they would get over-excited and accidentally cut too deep, killing Ace almost instantly. If that's not what they want, then it would make more sense to set up a somewhat automatic system which runs less risk of cutting too deep. Maybe.

But, didn't Nico confirm they made a serious attempt on Ace's life, like they told Charles? Yes, but they weren't done.

I believe it's possible Nico wanted Ace to wake up after receiving his neck injuries. That way, he'd be weakened by the blood loss and the pain, but still concious when Nico actually killed them. Under this interpretation, Nico wanted Ace to die knowing Nico was stronger than him, not just by using turpentine and cheap tricks, but just in a straight up fight (though with the handicap of the injuries).

Is that too sadistic? Arguably yes, but we still don't know how far Nico's anger is capable of taking them. I'm probably biased since I am a Veronika kinnie at heart, whose love for a character only increases the more evil and fucked up they are. Still, trust me when I say I went insane trying to figure out any method which could explain the fucking bloodstains on those wires as well as everything else, and this one is the best one I've found so far. It's all I have, I gotta work the characters around it somehow, and this is the only way I can think of.

Nico waiting for Ace to wake up also answers a lot of the basic questions of what the hell was going on when Teruko and Eden entered. If Nico really made a serious attempt on Ace's life, why are they standing so far without confirming Ace is dead? Because they know he's not, and are waiting for him to wake up.

The biggest issues I see here (besides the sheer insanity of the idea) are:

-This method still really isn't that reliable at not killing. However, it doesn't have to be; Nico just needs to trust it more than they do their own hands. And the trust Nico has on their own hands could actually be very little knowing how insecure they is about a lot of things. Not a great argument, but it's there.

-If Nico didn't think of the trial at all, there's no reason for them to take the cloak and tape out of the gym. This is admittedly a much more pressing issue, since a lot of my theory hinges on them doing this. My best answer is that they were working mostly on autopilot. Not actively thinking of the trial, but still knowing in the back of their mind that they would have to hide they did this. It's not great, but it's an answer.

-We don't have evidence Nico even had another weapon on them. If Nico wanted to kill Ace after he woke up, they would have likely brought a weapon with them. However, counterpoint; we know they must have had at least one possible weapon, the turpentine bottle. It's a pretty shitty weapon, but break it open and it would be effective enough. Additionally, the fact we don't know where that thing is implies Nico could have been hiding another weapon, but I'm hesitant to claim this, because again, no evidence.

Overall, I think these holes aren't too big, and considering I'm expecting to get lots of things wrong here, I'm comfortable enough with my answer to put it out there for peer review.

Closing Argument

-During the afternoon, the culprit had to get two custom weapons for their plan. One, the turpentine, they stole from Rose during a painting session. The other, Hu's wire, they simply asked for with some vague excuse, as they had a good relation with her.

-Once they got the wire, they split it into two and went to the gym, a while before the victim arrived. They also brought a stepstool and a broom. With them, they took down the rightmost fan, and ductaped one of the wires' end to one of its blades. They managed to put the fan back up, with the wire hidden on top of the blades. However, the fan didn't spin anymore. The culprit also broke the other fan with a similar method, so as to not make the victim suspicious when they entered the gym.

-The culprit waited until the victim entered the gym for their regular nighttime exercise session, likely after feeding the fish in the relax room.

-The victim, Ace, wanted to do some bench pressing, so he brought the weight rack closer. They didn't notice anything amiss, until the culprit entered the gym.

-With a rag filled with turpentine (maybe; it's impossible to know how people in the DRDT universe would use turpentine as a sedative), the culprit ambushed Ace. Although there was a struggle which knocked over the weight rack, the culprit managed to get Ace to inhale enough turpentine to knock him out. Now, the culprit could have just killed Ace then and there, but that's not what they wanted. They wanted to prove themselves stronger than him, or simply to make them suffer for what he had done to them. In any case, they wanted him to be seriously injured, but not dead by the time the turpentine wore off. Since they couldn't trust their own impulses, they wanted to use a more hands-off method which would ensure Ace would be in serious pain, but not die until the culprit could make sure he felt it.

-Working quickly as nighttime approached, the killer used the broom and stepstool to spin the rightmost fan's blades so as to get the wire taped to it to fall down.

-They tied a noose around the pull-up bar with the other part of the wire. They possibly made the wire triple over itself, and attached the fan-wire to its middle. They also put the non-noose end under the noose on the pull-up bar, for extra stability. For Ace's body, they used the roll of tape to attach two small weights from the rack to Ace's chest.

-With the wire system now hanging slack, like a vine, between the fan and the pull-up bar, they moved the benches under it. The killer also wore a cloak, which they took off and draped over the floor around where they believed the blood would end up.

-They dragged Ace's body to the benches. They propped him up there on his knees, letting his neck press down onto the wire system, specifically a part of the fan-wire. Once they made sure he wasn't going to fall, they quickly made their way to the stepstool, grabbed the broom, and got on it.

-With the broom, they moved the fan's blades manually, not too fast, but with some strength. The wire system pressed hard on Ace's neck, starting to cut his neck as it straightened. Ace's head tilted as this happened, and he started to lean towards the pull-up bar. As his neck dragged over the rolled up lone wire, various shallow cuts opened in his skin. Ace's head touched the pull-up bar's tape, staining it and the base of the noose with blood.

-The killer then slowly allowed Ace's body weight to press on the wire as the fan slowly spun in that direction, the speed controlled by the broom. The wires didn't fall to his chest because of the weights, as well as the slow nature of the descent. His blood stained every spot of the wire his neck dragged across, including the end of the fan-wire.

-The culprit repeated this one or two times, enough to feel as though Ace was sufficiently hurt for their purposes, but not so much they felt he'd die before waking up.

-When they were done, they gently let Ace's body lean on the wire as far as the fan would allow, before dropping the broom and hopping off the stepstool.

-They quickly ran over to Ace, pushing him off the wire system before it could do any more damage to him. In doing this, the bench he was kneeling on fell over, and Ace's body slammed on the wall next to the pull-up bar. The culprit managed to keep him in a sitting position, but the impact with the wall had left a small bloodstain behind Ace.

-The culprit moved the benches a bit to maneuver better around the gym. They took the bloodstained tape off the pull-up bar, retrieved the weights and tape from Ace's chest, and got their cloak off the floor. They used the cloak to wipe a bit of the blood off the wire system, though since it was already covered in blood, some still remained. Not enough to drip off and make a noticeable change on the floor, though. The killer left the weights off to a side in the gym, and ran off with the tape and cloak. They likely hid it somewhere nearby, like the trash can in the hallway or the changing rooms of the dress-up room.

-They came back to the gym at around the same time Eden went to the second floor (this is related to my other theory, don't worry too much about it). They began waiting for Ace to wake up, but their desire for cleanliness guided them in the tense situation. They started trying to figure out a way to take down the wire system without risking injury and without getting blood on themselves.

-A few minutes later, as Teruko went to the second floor and met with Eden, the killer figured out a way to take down the system. They grabbed the broom and wrapped a clean part of the fan-wire around it, before pulling with all their might.

-Several things happened at once. The noose and knot in the point of connection came undone instantly, and the lone wire flew towards the entrance. However, the strength of the pull also took down the fan from the ceiling, making a loud banging noise which could be heard from the hallway.

-The killer didn't think there'd be anyone on the second floor at the time, so they just continued their clean up effort as they waited for Ace to awaken. They grabbed the lone wire by the non-bloody parts and stretched it out, just as Teruko and Eden entered the gym.

-Upon seeing the two girls, the culprit panicked. They dropped the wire and ran away, but still had the sense to quickly pick up their cloak and tape just in case.

-The culprit's plan was to wait until Ace woke up, and in his weakened and pained state, kill him with the bottle of turpentine or some other weapon they had brought with them. And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling girls!

-The missing cloak, paired with the suspicious lack of blood on the scene; the turpentine theft during a painting session with Rose; the motive to kill Ace in this manner; their actions and presence in the crime scene; all paired with an admission of guilt. The method shows only one person with the ability, opportunity and motive to attempt such a heinous murder: Nico Hakobyan, the Ultimate Pet Therapist!

Conclusion

Is this conclusion perfect? By no means. Nico's actions are still extremely erratic and hard to explain, not to mention how difficult it would be to physically get the method to work. However, it's an answer which I feel sufficiently explains all the evidence in the crime scene, which is shockingly difficult. Those damn bloodstains, man.

Still, I imagine I've gotten quite a few things wrong, so this is more a starting point than a final answer. I just think it's solid enough to put out there and get second opinions on it.

Thanks for reading all the way to end! I would give you a cookie, but I'm afraid it's impossible through a screen. Have a good day!